With the Hacktober Fest 2022, it is important to learn how to fork and clone a repository so you can make valid changes and later make a pull request. This article is for beginners who are confused as to how we can contribute to the open source.

You know the basic git commands which I have discussed in my article named — Git: The Basics. However, contributing to other people’s repositories might be tricky if you’re new to it. So, let’s start with the way to fork the GitHub projects. For that reason, I have made this short guide for you.

First, visit the repository you want to fork and work on. You can see the option fork in the figure below: -

This will create a copy of the above portfolio in your profile under your username as: -

https://github.com/<username>/<repo_name>

Now, we need to bring the repo to your local device with the help of the following command: -

git clone https://github/<username>/<repo_name>

This would download all the code, branches, and commits from the original repository to your device. Then, we need to do some things that are explained below: -

• Creating a new branch

git checkout -b branch_name

• Creating a new remote for the upstream repo with the command (Not always required)

git remote add upstream <original repo_name>

• Then, you can make changes in the code and the usual push operations: -

git add .

git commit -m "the changes"

git push -u origin branch_name

After this, you can go to your GitHub repo you forked earlier and then click the “compare and pull request” button and you will be redirected to a screen where you can also add comments for the request and you can finally create a successful pull request which the maintainer will see and review to decide if they want to merge the changes.

I hope this article was helpful to you.

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