How to Contribute to a Project on GitHub

A quick how-to in contributing to an open source project hosted on GitHub. These instructions assume you've already created a GitHub account and properly set up your machine. For more details, GitHub also publishes similar instructions.

Set Up Your Repository

Fork a project by visiting its URL on GitHub and clicking the "Fork" button

Clone your fork to your local machine:

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git clone git@github.com:yourUsername/project-name.git

Assign the original repository to a remote called "upstream" to retrieve updates from the original repository you forked:

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cd project-name
git remote add upstream git://github.com/originalUsername/project-name.git

Routinely pull all the “upstream” updates to your local repository:

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git fetch upstream

And merge them to your forked master:

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git merge upstream/master

Write Code

Create and check out a feature branch to house your edits:

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git branch branchName
git checkout branchName

This can be shortened to:

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git checkout -b branchName

Make edits and commit them:

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git add someFile.js
git commit -m "Your commit message."

Push your new branch to GitHub:

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git push origin branchName

Visit your forked project on GitHub and switch to your branchName branch.

Click “Pull Request” to request that your features be merged to the “upstream” master.