git: updating your fork to match the source/parent/upstream

[naomi-lgbt]

Hello~!

You'll likely run in to situations where your forked version of a project "falls behind" the state of the source version. GitHub will allow you to make a pull request to bring the changes from the source into your fork, which does work, but creates a merge commit that will show up every time you create a PR back to the source.

Instead, to keep the commit history clean, you can rebase your fork against the source. Here are the steps to do so:

• Step one: Make sure you are on your primary branch with git checkout <branchname>. Most commonly, this will be git checkout main.
• Step two: Get the current state of the source repository with git fetch upstream. IF it throws an error that there is no upstream, you'll need to set it ↓
  • Step two.five: To set the upstream, you'll use git remote add upstream <url>, where the URL is the clone URL for the source repository.
• Step three: Reset the state of your local repository to match the source with git reset --hard upstream/<branchname>, where branchname is the name of the primary branch. So, most likely git reset --hard upstream/main.
• Step four: Force your fork repo to match this new state with git push -f.
• Step five: Celebrate your success!

https://github.com/nhcarrigan/code-snippets/blob/main/git-commands/git-update-fork.sh
I also have the commands saved in my notes, if you'd like to reference them as shell commands.

[eddiejaoude]

Thank you @nhcarrigan for this and also for the tips folder 👍 https://github.com/EddieJaoudeCommunity/support/blob/main/tips/git.md