Finally, push those changes so that your branch is now present in your remote repository as well. After cloning the repository, create a branch to work on your changes and commit them.

Start by forking the project you would like to work on. We will use GitHub, but all other remote hosting platforms work in a similar way. In this example, we will contribute to an open-source project that we don't have 'write access'. The pull request is closed by the project maintainer.The feature is merged into the official repository by the project maintainer.The team reviews the code and discusses the proposed changes.The project maintainer is notified that there is a new pull request.The developer creates a pull request using the remote hosting platform's web interface.The developer pushes his work to a public repo, with the help of a remote hosting platform (such as GitHub).A developer works on the feature in a dedicated branch, in their local repository.They always require either two distinct branches or two distinct repositories. In order to create a pull request, you have a puzzle with 4 pieces: the source repository, the source branch, the destination repository, and the destination branch. What you're doing with a pull request is asking someone to pull a branch from your repository into theirs. When everyone is happy with the proposed changes, the pull request can finally be merged into the project's main branch.Ī pull request is, essentially, a feature branch - it simply contains some additional meta-information on top of it, such as comments and code reviews. All these tools provide intuitive web interfaces that enable people to comment on the progress made, mention individual participants, and add labels or milestones. If you don't have a favorite yet, or if you don't know which is the best platform for your specific needs, have a look at our comparison of Git hosting services. While this activity could be achieved with notification emails, it's much more common (and convenient) to use a cloud-based hosting service, such as GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or Azure DevOps. PRs are not just about code reviews, though - they can trigger conversations among collaborators, enabling anyone to provide feedback for the proposed feature/modification, and even enhance it with follow-up commits. Thanks to them, project maintainers can be notified that there is new code that should be reviewed before (possibly) being integrated into the main project.ĭevelopers rely on pull requests when they don't have 'write access' to a repository (such as open-source projects) or when they simply need someone to review their work. Pull Requests (or PRs) allow people to collaborate in Git land.

Pull request definition