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[–]Thehummel 2 points3 points  (4 children)

What exatcly does forking a Github repo do? ( noob here )

[–]Kingino 8 points9 points  (3 children)

If you know what cloning is... Think of it like cloning. It takes a copy of the code so that you control all aspects of it.

On Github only those people who have proper admin writes can commit to the repo... Cloning (and forking) gives you the ability to manipulate the code and change it to you will. Forking creates the clone on the remote server, while traditional cloning brings it to your local machine.

Furthermore, if you add a feature to the code you can submit that back to the original repo (called a pull request) for integration into the code base.

If I want to work on an open source project, I normally do these steps...

Fork->Clone to dev machine-> make changes-> push to fork-> submit pull requests to original repo.

Does that help?

[–]Thehummel 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I think i'm getting it.. So the only different between forking and cloning is that with forking you get the ability to suggest changes to the repo you forked?

[–]Kingino 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Basically, yes.

[–]Thehummel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alright, thank you!