How to fork a repository in Git
Łukasz Holeczek
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Forking creates a personal copy of a repository under your account, enabling contributions to open-source projects without direct write access to the original repository. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve worked with forked repositories in collaborative development throughout my 25 years of development experience. The most common approach is using GitHub’s fork button to create the copy, then cloning it locally for development. This method establishes the foundation for pull request workflows and collaborative open-source contributions.
Fork repository via GitHub interface, clone your fork, and configure upstream remote.
# Fork the repository via GitHub web interface first
# Then clone your fork locally
git clone https://github.com/your-username/repo-name.git
cd repo-name
# Add the original repository as upstream remote
git remote add upstream https://github.com/original-owner/repo-name.git
# Verify remotes
git remote -v
# origin https://github.com/your-username/repo-name.git (fetch)
# origin https://github.com/your-username/repo-name.git (push)
# upstream https://github.com/original-owner/repo-name.git (fetch)
# upstream https://github.com/original-owner/repo-name.git (push)
# Keep your fork updated with upstream changes
git fetch upstream
git checkout main
git merge upstream/main
git push origin main
Here the fork creates a complete copy of the repository under your GitHub account. Cloning your fork downloads it to your local machine for development. Adding upstream remote links to the original repository, enabling you to pull updates. The fetch upstream command retrieves changes from the original repository. Merging upstream/main incorporates those changes into your local branch. Pushing to origin updates your fork with the latest upstream changes.
Best Practice Note:
This is the forking workflow we recommend for CoreUI contributors wanting to submit pull requests and improvements. Create feature branches from an updated main branch to avoid conflicts, regularly sync with upstream to prevent your fork from becoming outdated, and never commit directly to main—always use feature branches for pull requests to maintain clean history.
