When I forked the project initially and set up my env I had this.
> git branch -a remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master remotes/origin/master remotes/upstream/master
I do not have "push" permission to the upstream project. I must send pull requests from my fork.
A week later a new branch was created for work on a specific enhancement to upstream. The team may be working from this branch for many weeks.
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master remotes/origin/master remotes/upstream/new-project-feature remotes/upstream/master
What is the appropriate way for me to setup and submit code to this branch? This is what I have done. Was it the proper thing to do?
git branch new-project-feature git checkout new-project-feature git rebase upstream/new-project-feature .. code changes .. commit git push origin HEAD:new-project-feature .. go to github and send the pull request.
How does the parent project know to merge the pull request to its new-project-feature branch?
The idea behind a pull-request is:
- you work on a small enhancement that you would like to see merged into the upstream branch
- you push that enhancement to your fork (
origin), and make the pull request from there
BUT:
You should make that enhancement in a dedicated branch, not in the target branch.
That means, not in master or in new-project-feature: those are "target" branches which, in your fork, are there to mirror the upstream repo, to "remote track" upstream/master or upstream/new-project-feature.
So you should make one or several branches, each one for a small change you want to contribute to new-project-feature, push that one little branch "small_change", and make a pull request to upstream/new-project-feature.
You can regularly pull upstream, updating your local new-project-feature with the latest of upstream/new-project-feature.
You can then rebase your "small_changes" branch on top of the updated new-project-feature branch, and go on working on it.
Note that if new-project-feature changes in upstream after you already make your pull request from the fork, all you need to do is:
- fetch and update locally the
new-project-feature branch - rebase your
small_change branch on top of new-project-feature - check that everything still works
git push --force origin small_change
The last forced push will automatically update your pull request: you won't have to do a second pull request.
See more at "How to do a Github pull request?".
