It seems like you have to interact with github.com to initiate a pull request. Is this so?
I've created a tool recently that does exactly what you want:
https://github.com/jd/git-pull-request
It automates everything in a single command, forking the repo, pushing the PR etc. It also supports updating the PR if you need to edit/fix it!
A man search like...
man git | grep pull | grep request
gives
git request-pull <start> <url> [<end>]
But, despite the name, it's not what you want. According to the docs:
Generate a request asking your upstream project to pull changes into their tree. The request, printed to the standard output, begins with the branch description, summarizes the changes and indicates from where they can be pulled.
@HolgerJust mentioned the github gem that does what you want:
sudo gem install gh
gh pull-request [user] [branch]
Others have mentioned the official hub
package by github:
sudo apt-get install hub
or
brew install hub
then
hub pull-request [-focp] [-b <BASE>] [-h <HEAD>]
I ended up making my own, I find that it works better the other solutions that were around.
https://npmjs.org/package/pullr
UPDATE: The hub command is now an official github project and also supports creating pull requests
ORIGINAL:
Seems like a particularly useful thing to add to the hub command: http://github.com/defunkt/hub or the github gem: http://github.com/defunkt/github-gem
I suggest filing an issue with those projects asking for it. The github guys are pretty responsive.
I've used this tool before- although it seems like there needs to be an issue open first, it is super useful and really streamlines workflow if you use github issue tracking. git open-pull and then a pull request is submitted from whatever branch you are on or select. https://github.com/jehiah/git-open-pull
EDIT: Looks like you can create issues on the fly, so this tool is a good solution.
Git now ships with a subcommand 'git request-pull' [-p] <start> <url> [<end>]
You can see the docs here
You may find this useful but it is not exactly the same as GitHub's feature.