Glossary
What Is a Fork in GitHub?
A fork is your personal copy of someone else’s repository on GitHub. Forking lets you change code freely without affecting the original project — and it’s the standard way to contribute to open source.
How it works
- Fork a repo you want to contribute to.
- Make changes in your copy.
- Open a pull request to offer your changes back.
Forking is also great for learning — you can study and modify any public project.
More terms
- What Is a Git Branch?
- What Is a Git Clone?
- What Is a Git Commit?
- What Is Git? Version Control Explained