What is the difference between Forking and Cloning on GitHub?

Question

I\'d like to know the differences between doing a Fork of a project and doing a clone of it.

Can I only send pull requests via GitHub if I\'ve forked a

Answer 1

Another weird subtle difference on GitHub is that changes to forks are not counted in your activity log until your changes are pulled into the original repo. What's more, to change a fork into a proper clone, you have to contact Github support, apparently.

From Why are my contributions not showing up:

Commit was made in a fork

Commits made in a fork will not count toward your contributions. To make them count, you must do one of the following:

Open a pull request to have your changes merged into the parent repository. To detach the fork and turn it into a standalone repository on GitHub, contact GitHub Support. If the fork has forks of its own, let support know if the forks should move with your repository into a new network or remain in the current network. For more information, see "About forks."