You've made some fantastic changes to the project, and now it's time to share them with the rest of your team. The primary way to do this on GitHub is by creating a Pull Request. Think of a Pull Request as a formal proposal to merge your changes into another branch, typically the main branch of the project. It's also the gateway to code review, where your teammates can examine your code and offer suggestions before it becomes part of the official project.
Before you can create a Pull Request, you need to ensure your changes have been committed and pushed to your feature branch on GitHub. If you haven't done this yet, follow these steps:
git add .
git commit -m "Descriptive message about your changes"
git push origin your-feature-branch-nameOnce your branch is pushed, navigate to your repository on GitHub. You'll often see a prominent banner suggesting you create a Pull Request for your recently pushed branch. If you don't see this banner, you can click on the 'Pull requests' tab near the top of the page and then click the green 'New pull request' button.
On the 'Compare & pull request' page, you'll need to specify which branch you want to merge from and which branch you want to merge into.
- Base branch: This is the branch you want to merge into (e.g.,
mainormaster). - Compare branch: This is the branch containing your new changes (e.g.,
your-feature-branch-name).
GitHub will show you a diff of the changes between the two branches. Take a moment to review this to ensure it reflects what you intended.
graph TD
A[Your Feature Branch] --> B{Compare & Pull Request Page};
B --> C[Base Branch (e.g., main)];
B --> D[Compare Branch (Your Feature Branch)];
C -- Merge Into --> E[Main Project Branch];
D -- Contains Changes --> E;
Now, it's time to give your Pull Request a clear and concise title. This should briefly explain the purpose of your changes. Below the title, you'll find a description box. This is your opportunity to provide more detail about:
- What problem your changes solve.
- How you've solved it.
- Any important context or considerations for reviewers.
- References to any related issues (e.g., 'Closes #123').