[Git] How to Contribute to Open Source Projects Step by Step

• Go to a open source project of your interest and press the fork button

• Click create fork

• Press Code button and copy the url

• Now go to your IDE. Here I will use VS Code

git clone "copied url"

• We can see that everything is cloned into the local repository

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How to update my local repository

• if other open source contributors make changes, then I will need to update my local repository
• Otherwise there will be a conflict when I ask for pull request

• Go to the original project repository and copy the project url

• Now go to your IDE terminal and type this

git remote add upstream "original project repository url"

# git remote -v shows remote repositories connected to your local repositories
git remote -v

• So it seems like original repository url is already there
• Now we can bring any recent changes made by other contributors

# bring latest updates from 'upstream'
git fetch upstream

# go to the branch you want to update
git checkout master

# merge the latest update and my changes
# git merge remote repository/my branch name
git merge upstream/master

# update my local repository
git push origin master

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Make a branch and Contribute

• instead of using master or main branch, it's better to make a branch to show what issue you are trying to solve

git checkout -b "branch name"

• This is same as:

git branch "branch name"
git checkout "branch name"

• Commit and push your changes

git add 

git commit -m "Add visual studio code for code editor"

git push

• Press Create pull request button and it's all done!

• All you have to do is wait to see if your pull request is approved