oliverdavies.uk/source/_posts/updating-forked-github-repos.md

---
title: Updating Forked Repositories on GitHub
date: 2015-06-18
excerpt:
  I just had to update a repo that I forked on GitHub. This is how I did it. Did
  I do it the correct way?
tags:
  - git
  - github
  - phpstorm
  - sculpin
---

I just had to update a repo that I forked on GitHub. This is how I did it. Did I
do it the correct way?

## Sculpin

People may or may not know, but this site runs on
[Sculpin](https://sculpin.io/), a PHP based static site generator (this may be
the first time that I've mentioned it on this site). The source code is hosted
on [GitHub](https://github.com/opdavies/oliverdavies.uk), and I've listed the
site on the [Community page](https://sculpin.io/community/) on the Sculpin
website.

To get it there, I forked the
[main sculpin.io repository](https://github.com/sculpin/sculpin.io) so that I
had [my own copy](https://github.com/opdavies/sculpin.io), created a branch,
made my additions and submitted a pull request. Easy enough!

## New Domain

In the last week or so, I've changed this site URL from .co.uk to just .uk, and
also updated the GitHub repo URL to match, so I wanted to update the Community
page to use the correct URL.

There had been commits to the main repo since my pull request was merged, I
didn't want to delete my repo and fork again, and making any changes against and
old codebase isn't best practice, so I wanted to merge the latest changes into
my forked repo before I did anything else - just to check that I didn't break
anything!

## Updating my Local Repo

I had a quick look for a _Update my fork_ button or something, but couldn't see
one to I added the main repository as an additional remote called `upstream` and
fetched the changes.

```language-bash
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/sculpin/sculpin.io.git

$ git fetch upstream
remote: Counting objects: 33, done.
remote: Total 33 (delta 6), reused 6 (delta 6), pack-reused 27
Unpacking objects: 100% (33/33), done.
From https://github.com/sculpin/sculpin.io
* [new branch]      master     -> upstream/master
* [new branch]      pr/4       -> upstream/pr/4
```

Now my local site knows about the upstream repo, and I could rebase the changes
(`git pull upstream master` should have worked too) and push them back to
origin.

```language-bash
$ git rebase upstream/master
First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
...
Fast-forwarded master to upstream/master.

$ git push origin master
```

This seems to have worked OK - the commits are still authored by the correct
people and at the correct date and time - and I went ahead and created a new
feature branch and pull request based on that master branch.

{% include 'figure' with {
    image: {
        src: '/images/blog/forked-github-repo-commits.png',
        alt: 'The commits on my master branch after rebasing',
    },
    caption: 'The commits on my forked master branch after rebasing and pushing. All good!',
} %}

{% include 'figure' with {
    image: {
        src: '/images/blog/my-commit-to-the-rebased-branch.png',
        alt: 'The new feature branch with my additional commit',
    },
    caption: 'The new feature branch with the new commit.',
} %}

## Is There a Better Way?

Did I miss something? Is there a recommended and/or better way to update your
forked repos, maybe through the UI? Please
<a href="https://twitter.com/?status=Rebasing GitHub Forks: @{{ site.twitter.user }}">send
me a tweet</a> with any comments.

## Up

**December 2015:** I’ve found that PhpStorm has an option available to rebase a
fork from within the IDE. This is within the _VCS_ > _Git_ menu.

I believe that it will use an existing "upstream" remote if it exists, otherwise
it will add one automatically for you, linking to the repository that you forked
from.

Once you’ve completed the rebase, you can then push your updated branch either
from the terminal, or using the _Push_ command from the same menu.

![Rebasing a forked repository in PhpStorm using the VCS menu.](/images/blog/github-fork-rebase-phpstorm.png)

It would be great to see something similar added to
[hub](https://hub.github.com) too (I’ve created
[an issue](https://github.com/github/hub/issues/1047))!

## Resources

- [PhpStorm - Advanced GitHub Integration: Rebase My GitHub Fork (blog post)](http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2011/02/advanced-github-integration-rebase-my-github-fork/)
- [Rebasing a GitHub fork inside PhpStorm (video)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twy-dhVgN4k)
- [hub](https://hub.github.com) - makes Git better with GitHub