How to Fork a repository on GitHub is as easy as pressing a button, we take this for granted, but why... Tagged with github, opensource, tutorial, codenewbie.

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Learn about forking a repository on GitHub, its importance for collaboration, the difference between forking and cloning, and how to maintain a forked repository.

What the FORK are you doing?!

The real tl;dr
<h1>Clone:</h1>
<ul>
<li>Local copy of a foreign repository</li>
<li>in general no write/access and no syncing capabilities to remote repository</li>
</ul>
<h1>Fork:</h1>
<ul>
<li>Copy of foreign repository in your GitHub Profile</li>
<li>Linked to original Repository with syncing capabilities</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/RkZMINlWRqikxKSlK2/giphy.gif" alt="">

Great Video! It took me WAY TOO LONG to learn the difference between Cloning and Forking.

Generally we <code>fork</code> when we are working on other projects or repos that we do not own or are not directly part of the dev team for whereas we <code>clone</code> repos that we are added as collaborators on.
The reason for forking is to ensure the security principle least access. People on forked repos can make PRs on the main project repo without directly having <code>push</code> access to all branches of the project, so we do not have to worry about someone adding or modifying code directly to/on the codebase without proper review.

I don’t often fork repos, because rarely am I going to do more than examine the thing and then into the trash can it goes. Maybe I take snippets I credit in a comment. I fork when I am going to actually contribute code to a project, but most of the projects I am not going to go through the motions of writing code to whatever standard they expect and substantially improve if I am after 3 lines of lua code and want to see what else they got in it.
Going fork crazy clogs up my GitHub repos with useless things I would never need. I keep star lists instead arranged by topics of interest. Deleting old, useless Github repos is tedious and if scripted can be dangerous. But I have been using git a while now (6+ years I think) and have a nuanced understanding of it and even do a bit of git history hacking at times, so this video may not have been intended for me exactly.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I will fork and improve other people’s projects in minor or major ways but for a lot of projects I work on and research a lot, they are personal configs people don’t really accept pull requests on those…