Contributing to Github Projects

The following are some personal notes on the basic workflow for contributing to a project on Github. 

1. Visit the project's repo page (https://github.com/someguy/nice_project), click on "Fork" in the upper right corner.
   
   
   
2. Clone your newly forked repo to your local machine

git clone https://github.com/you/nice_project



3. Set an "upstream" remote so you can pull down "someguy"s code whenever you need to.

git remote set-url upstream https://github.com/someguy/nice_project



4. Create a branch of the master or dev or whatever so you can start making your changes. Give it a meaningful name:

git branch bugFix-UTFencoding
git checkout bugFix-UTFencoding
#or all in one with:
git checkout -b bugFix-UTFencoding



5. Make your changes, add the files and make a commit:

git add lib/some_file
git commit -m 'fixed the UTF encoding errors'



6. Push your changes to your forked repo. Typically known as the 'origin' remote:

git push origin bugFix-UTFencoding



7. Log into Github and you should see a notification on your forked repo
8. Click on the "Compare & pull request"


9. Fill out the pull request, and then hit "Create pull request"





10. Now you just wait on comments, requests, ridicule, or anything else. Once they are happy with your contributions they will "merge" your changes into their branch.


11. Once its accepted you can delete that branch either through the Github website or at the CLI:

git checkout master #it complains if you try to delete a branch you are on
git branch -D bugFix-UTFencoding



12. Now you can pull down the updated upstream to see your changes in someguy's repo:

git pull upstream master



13. If you'd like you can update your GH repo by pushing what you recently pulled down:

git push origin master

Congrats on getting your pull request accepted and contributing to something. You will now feel slightly less like a leech.

Rinse and repeat lines 4-10 on the same project or the whole thing for a new project.

Bonus: If you want to pull down a specific branch from a remote upstream, you can easily do it with "git checkout -b up-master upstream/master"