Once I did a PR on a repo, should I delete my fork?

Question

I'm working on a free proyect over Github. I fork it, made some changes, did a PR and everything worked ok (PR was accepted).

Then I update my fork with upstream, did some other changes, and made another PR.

Then I realice that my PR included all the commits I pushed earlier, and every file I modify, even the ones I already sent.

I made the upstream to be up to date, but I failed somewhere, or my fork, never understood that I was up to date (I even made the push).

So to avoid that, I made a branch only with the file I changed. However, the PR still want to send all the commits I made to the repo. The files in this case, are ok, only modified files are on the PR

So, what is the correct way to work with a fork?

Did I missed a step after upstream and push? or should I delete my fork after every PR and start all over again?

Answer 1

Here are the steps you need to do to get a clean, nice pull request. I generally suggest this workflow to people with less previous exposure to git. You could make a rebase on auth repo master, but this might lead to non-trivial merging, depending on the delta. Therefore:

1. Do not delete your fork. That was bad advice in the comments.

2. Fetch the latest master branch from the target repo to your local clone (on your computer, not your fork).

   git fetch --all

3. Create a new branch based on that latest official master branch

   git checkout -b new-feature origin/master (assuming the authoritative repo is origin)

4. Cherry-pick all the changes for your second pull request onto your new branch (ideally with git cherry-pick -n, so you can make a new nice topical commit).

   git cherry-pick -n 923c223 (assuming your new changes are in commit 923c223)

5. Push your new clean branch to your fork

   git push myfork new-feature

6. Make a pull request from your new clean branch on your fork to the official repo's master branch.

Yay - Now you have a pull request with only your new changes!

On a sidenote: A bit of advice for you.

Generally, you should look at your local clone for all the work. The fork is just a place where to put your finished or half-finished work so it doesn't vanish when your local computer dies, and to collaborate with others. Always start new changes based on the latest master of the official/authoritative repository. With more experience, you most likely want to rebase your changes daily on authoritative master to always keep only a small delta in order to facilitate merges and simplify your cognitive load when developing and bugfixing.