Fork and Clone

Learning Competencies

By the end of this exploration, you should be able to:

• Fork a repository
• Clone a forked repository

Summary

You will use this deep-dive exploration to create your forked version of a repo. You will then clone a copy to your machine. This clone is where you will be working on reflections for the rest of your learning exploration and assessments throughout Foundations. By creating a forked version, your changes will not show on the main Dev Academy version.

"A fork is a copy of a repository. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project. Most commonly, forks are used to either propose changes to someone else's project or to use someone else's project as a starting point for your own idea." Practice Forking GitHub Help

Time Box

Follow the timebox suggestions. If you get stuck, take a quick break and return to it. Reach out to the community on Discord. Let the learning competencies be your guide.

Forking Workflow

The Forking Workflow is fundamentally different from other popular Git workflows. Instead of using a single server-side repository to act as the “central” codebase, it gives every developer their own server-side repository. Each contributor has two Git repositories: a private local one and a public server-side one. The Forking Workflow is most often seen in public open-source projects.

The main advantage of the Forking Workflow is that contributions can be integrated without the need for everybody to push to a single central repository. Developers push to their own server-side repositories, and only the project maintainer can push to the official repository. This allows the maintainer to accept commits from any developer without giving them write access to the official codebase.

The Forking Workflow typically follows a branching model based on the Gitflow Workflow. This means that complete feature branches will be purposed to merge into the original project maintainer's repository. The result is a distributed workflow that allows large, organic teams (including untrusted third parties) to collaborate securely and flexibly. This also makes it an ideal workflow for open source projects.

Explore Forking

Use the timebox suggestions and explore Forking.

Suggested Resources:

• GitHub for Poets Forks and Pull requests
• Practice Forking GitHub Help
• Atlassian Forking Workflow

Step 1: Fork

Navigate to the reflections repo in the foundations org.

Create your own version of this repo by clicking the Fork button (top right) and follow the process. Below is an example of this process using the Foundations repo.

Origin: https://github.com/dev-academy-foundations/reflections
Destination: https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/reflections

Step 2: Cloning

Your forked copy of the repository now exists on GitHub, but to add or edit files using your text editor, you need it to exist on your computer (i.e. you need to clone it locally).

1. In your forked repo (i.e. https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/reflections), click on <> Code and copy the SSH URL (Figure 3).
2. In your terminal, navigate in to your dev-academy folder.
3. Enter the command git clone and use the keyboard shortcut cmd v (mac) or ctrl v (win) to paste.

Step 3: Open in Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a text editor you installed during the initial setup. You may have also dabbled in other text editors like 'Atom' or 'Sublime Text', but our editor of choice is Visual Studio (VS) Code for this course.

1. In your terminal, navigate into your reflections folder.
2. Enter the command code . which will open up the reflections folder in VS Code.

Step 4: Add your (previous) Reflections

The repo you cloned has a folder for each of the sprints you will do, a my-reflections markdown (.md) file in each folder, and an end-of-sprint file that contains the checklist and final reflections you will do once the sprint is completed.
You'll add your reflections to these files on your local version of repo and push them back up to your forked version on GitHub.

Have a look around the files in the sprint-1 folder. Please add your own files if you would like to hold any other reflections or noticings in this repo.

Pro-tip: Use the command line to navigate, open applications and open files.

1. Open the reflections repo in VS Code (hint: code .).

2. Copy and paste your previous reflections into the file. Use markdown to make the question format 'bold' or into headers.

3. Stage your file.

Reflect

Open my-reflections-sprint-1.md in VS Code and add your reflections from this challenge. The questions are under the GitHub Fork & Clone heading in that file.

Stage, commit and push to your GitHub reflections repo (i.e. https://github.com/your-username/reflections).

Additional Practice and Resources

• Forking (GitHub Article)
• Git the simple guide
• GitHub Guides - Practice Forking Projects