From the course: Visual Studio: Source Control with Git and GitHub

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,500 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Understand when to fork a repository

Understand when to fork a repository - Visual Studio Tutorial

From the course: Visual Studio: Source Control with Git and GitHub

Start my 1-month free trial

Understand when to fork a repository

- [Instructor] When you want to collaborate on an open source or other big company project, it's best to create a fork. First, let's explore the subtle differences between forking and cloning a repo. To be clear, in the GitHub world, a fork and a clone are two ways to create a copy of an existing repository. The difference comes down to your intent. The main reason to create a fork is when you want to contribute changes back to the original repo and you are not an authorized contributor. Here's the basic idea. Use clone to make a local copy of an existing repository; use fork to make a copy of the repository on GitHub. Here's the scenario. I find an interesting public repository on GitHub, I'm interested in learning more and I want to be able to contribute ideas and code to the project. On GitHub, I create a fork. Now I have my own public copy of the repository in GitHub. Because GitHub is a social network, everyone can…

Contents