Learning objectives

• Locate remote branches on GitHub
• Create a pull request
• Update a pull request with a title and a relevant description

🔃 Comparing changes

As developers, we often develop new features on a branch.

When we’ve completed the feature, we need to merge our changes into another branch.

So we’ll need a way to compare changes between two different branches on GitHub.

Let’s consider the following situation.

We have a repository like this:

Original repository

---
title: CodeYourFuture/GitHomeworkTest
---
gitGraph
   commit
   commit
   commit
   commit

And there’s another forked repository belonging to owner Dedekind561.
Dedekind561 has created a branch called bio-page with the new feature.

🍴 Forked repository

---
title: Dedekind561/GitHomeworkTest
---
gitGraph
   commit
   commit
   commit
   commit
   branch bio-page
   commit
   commit
   commit

🎯 Goal: Merge changes from the bio-page branch into the CodeYourFuture/GitHomeworkTest main branch

Pull Request

To merge changes from one branch to another, we need to let other users know:

• what the changes are
• which branches we’re comparing
• additional context about the proposed change, like why we’re making the change

For this purpose, we can use a pull request.

Creating a new pull request

During the course, we’ll use pull requests to review your work. You’ll need to push your work on a branch and then open a pull request to get feedback on your work.

We can use the Github interface to create a new pull request.

The steps below assume you have a forked a repository called GitHomeworkTest and you’ve pushed a branch to this remote repository.

Step 1

Go to your forked repository. The page should look like this:

Double check your url, it should be github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/GitHomeworkTest

Step 2

Locate the branches button on this page.

Step 3

📝 Double check you’re on a branches view like this.

Step 4

Locate the New pull request button for the bio-page branch.

Step 5

Double check you can see the Open a pull request view.

Questions:

a) Double check the base repository ( it should be set to CodeYourFuture/GitHomeworkTest )
b) Double check the head repository ( this should be the forked repository YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/GitHomeworkTest )
c) Double check the base branch ( this should be set to main )
d) Double check the head branch ( this should be set to bio-page )

Step 6

Update the pull request title to include your region, name and the week the coursework is for.

Step 7

Update the pull request description with information about the changes on your branch.

Below we’ve added a description “Create a bio page with details about myself”

Step 8

Finally, click on Create pull request.

Double check you end up with a pull request like this:

Questions

a) Locate the Files changed tab and check the change you’ve added in your branch
b) Locate the Commits tab and check the commits from your bio-page branch

Using a pull request template

Some repositories are set up with a template for a description, which gets automatically set in the Open a pull request view.

Check the description field for any instructions to complete the pull request.

Check out the example below:

Here there are some prompts for you to fill in information - make sure you fill it in.