Recover a commit sent as a pull-request from a deleted fork on GitHub

Question

I did something stupid…

I forked a repo on GitHub.
I made some changes, committed them on my fork.
I sent this commit as a pull-request back to the original repo.
Here comes the stupid part: I deleted my fork.

The owner of the original repo requested a couple changes in my code before he could accept the pull-request, which I'd gladly do.

I tried re-forking the repo, but I can't checkout the commit from the pull-request, it's not even there as an "unlinked" commit (a commit that is not part of any branch or tag, I don't know the official terminology).

My question is: How can I recover the commit sent as a pull-request ?

If there's no way, re-doing the changes in a new commit is an option, but the pull-request would be lost. My question is not about not losing the changes from the commit, it's about not losing the git history, meaning keeping the commit's SHA1 (and anything else I might not be aware of).

So did you make the changes right on the website without cloning anything in git? If you did clone your fork, did you already delete the clone on your computer? — Ajedi32
– Ajedi32, Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 18:26

Chris · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-14 14:05:44Z

It is possible to fetch pull requests to your local machine.

Without having a link to the pull request in question it's hard to test whether this will work, but you can try to

create a new fork of the repository,
clone your new fork,

fetch your pull request from the upstream repository,

git remote add upstream https://github.com/User/repository.git $EDITOR .git/config # Add `fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/upstream/pr/*` to # the relevant section, as outlined in the linked page. Note that # we use `upstream` instead of `origin` as the target. git fetch upstream

merge the pull request into your local repository, e.g.
```
git checkout main git merge --ff-only upstream/pr/1 
```
and then push it back to your new fork.

If that fails, you can submit a support request to GitHub asking them to restore your repository. From an FAQ about security:

We do not retroactively remove repositories from backups when deleted by the user, as we may need to restore the repository for the user if it was removed accidentally.

To initiate this process, contact their support team as soon as possible.

@Chris: Thanks for your answer. The following links helped me too. Both for point 3 mentioned above: stackoverflow.com/questions/6743514/… And stackoverflow.com/questions/2643502/…
@Chris, this is pure gold! However, I am uncertain of how exactly I can add the new commits on top of the existing pull request, without having to create a new one. Pushing to the new fork does not work as expected in this case since the old pull request is coming from the unknown repository (the deleted fork). Any hints are appreciated
@appoll, I don't think you can update the old PR. You'll have to create a new one. The documentation for Modifying an inactive pull request locally includes steps to switch to a new branch, push that new branch to GitHub, and create a new PR. Furthermore, "The remote refs/pull/ namespace is read-only", so you can't just push back to the PR ref itself.
@Chris, makes some sense. Was just wondering if I was missing something obvious. Thanks!
I tried these, git was able to fetch all the PRs too which was nice. But in the 4th step (git merge --ff-only upstream/pr/230) it returned "fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting."

Rich Signell · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-31 11:09:26Z

The easiest way to do this is now with the GitHub CLI.

Create a new fork, clone it:
```
gh repo fork <org>/<repo> 
```
In your clone repo, checkout the PR:
```
gh pr checkout <num> 
```
Push back to the fork:
```
git push -u origin HEAD 
```

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