Fast Forward Your Fork
Since forking a repository is so easy on GitHub, a number of people tend to do it thinking they want to play with the source, but then never actually push…
Since forking a repository is so easy on GitHub, a number of people tend to do it thinking they want to play with the source, but then never actually push back into their fork. Meanwhile, development continues on the main branch, and it’s a little annoying to have to add them as a remote and merge in order to get back up to date. So, we’ve added a new button to your repository details that will show up if you forked a project, didn’t push to it, and the source repo has moved on:
If you click on ‘Fast Forward’, it will move all your branches up to wherever the repository you originally forked from now is. Now all of those of you who forked Rails months ago and never did anything with it and are thinking of trying again, go forth and Fast Forward.
Written by
Related posts
Year recap and future goals for the GitHub Innovation Graph
Discover the latest trends and insights on public software development activity on GitHub with data from the Innovation Graph through Q3 2025.
Help shape the future of open source in Europe
Read GitHub’s position on the European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy and learn how to participate.
Build an agent into any app with the GitHub Copilot SDK
Now in technical preview, the GitHub Copilot SDK can plan, invoke tools, edit files, and run commands as a programmable layer you can use in any application.