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I'm experimenting with github fork-and-pull model playing a role of maintainer (full access to golden repo) and a role of contributor (who contributes by forking and creating a pull request).

GitHub has clear directions for the maintainer on how to create a local branch from pull request in order to review the code locally (i.e. build/test/etc): From your project repo:

git checkout -b pr-review-branch-name master git pull [fork-url-from-pull-request]

So far so good. As maintainer, I comment on the PR, and ask for some additional work. The contributor goes ahead and makes the requested changes, pushes them up to his fork on the server (and updates the pull request message board)..

My question: as Maintainer, do I need to create a new branch as described above to pull the updated code in the pull request? Or is there a way for me to update the branch I already created above?

Update: here are my exact commands (with identity removed):

$ /c/ws/demo/maintainer $ git clone https://server.xyz.com/PoCs/fork-and-pull-test.git Cloning into 'fork-and-pull-test'... Checking connectivity... done. $ /c/ws/demo/maintainer $ cd fork-and-pull-test/ $ /c/ws/demo/maintainer/fork-and-pull-test (master) $ git checkout -b pr-review-branch-name master Switched to a new branch 'pr-review-branch-name' $ /c/ws/demo/maintainer/fork-and-pull-test (pr-review-branch-name) $ git pull https://server.xyz.com/forker/fork-and-pull-test.git master ... From https://server.xyz.com/forker/fork-and-pull-test * branch master -> FETCH_HEAD Updating 57e8399..96cada4 Fast-forward .. $ /c/ws/demo/maintainer/fork-and-pull-test (pr-review-branch-name) $ git status On branch pr-review-branch-name nothing to commit, working directory clean $ git remote -v origin https://server.xyz.com/PoCs/fork-and-pull-test.git (fetch) origin https://server.xyz.com/PoCs/fork-and-pull-test.git (push)
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The person who forked your repository (who I'll call the "forker") has a remote clone, and they are committing to their feature branch. The pull request is simply you fetching changes from their remote repository, and then merging them to your local branch. (Note: Since a git pull is the same as git fetch && git merge, you might think of a "Pull Request" as a "Fetch & Merge Request".)

If you've already pulled from the forker's repository (assuming their remote is called "forker"), you probably ran a command like this:

git remote add forker https://github.com/forker/myrepo.git

already have a local copy of the branch, and that branch has a remote associated with with the forker's remote repository.

If you run git remote -v you should see the forker's repository:

$ git remote -v origin [email protected]:me/myrepo.git (fetch) origin [email protected]:me/myrepo.git (push) forker [email protected]:forker/myrepo.git (fetch) forker [email protected]:forker/myrepo.git (push)

Then you can run git pull forker pr-review-branch-name to update your local branch pr-review-branch-name with their latest commits. There's no need to create a new branch each time they update their branch.

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thanks for responding. That is exactly what I expected - that would see another remote besides "origin" ... However, "origin" is the only one I see. I will edit the original post with all the commands I ran ...
if that's the case, you can run git remote add forker https://github.com/forker/myrepo.git to add the remote again. since you've already pulled their branch's history, when you run pull again it'll find the common ancestor (or, the last commit where you pulled their branch).

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