Allow a Fork of a Repo to sync individual branches from the Upstream repo at any time

[vanm]

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Hello, when forking a repo, Github asks if we would like to copy only the "main" branch. If you leave this default checked, and later decide that you actually do want to work on a specific branch (that is not "main") from the Upstream repo, you need to delete your entire fork and re-fork from the upstream branch. Instead, it would be nice to be able to select individual branches from the upstream of any fork and sync/copy that branch to your fork.

[vanm]

You can do this from the command line git remote add upstream [repo] git fetch upstream [branchname], but my specific feedback is that it would be nice to do it from the GitHub.com interface. I'll close this since it's not a major problem.

[andredisa]

Hi @vanm,

You don't need to delete and re-fork a repository just to work on a specific branch. You can import individual branches from the upstream repository into your fork. Here’s how:

Steps to Import a Specific Branch:

1. Add the Upstream Repository as a Remote:

• Open your terminal and navigate to your forked repository.
• Add the upstream repository
  git remote add upstream https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/REPO_NAME.git

2. Fetch the Specific Branch from Upstream:

• Fetch the branch you want to import:
  git fetch upstream BRANCH_NAME

3. Create and Switch to the New Branch:

• Create a new branch in your fork based on the upstream branch:
  git checkout -b NEW_BRANCH_NAME upstream/BRANCH_NAME

4. Push the New Branch to Your Fork:

• Push the new branch to your fork:
  git push -u origin NEW_BRANCH_NAME

Example:
If you want to import the feature-branch from the upstream repository:
git remote add upstream https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/REPO_NAME.git git fetch upstream feature-branch git checkout -b feature-branch upstream/feature-branch git push

This way, you can work on any specific branch from the upstream repository without needing to delete and re-fork your repository.

[vanm]

Thanks, andredisa! I ended up doing this from the command line, but I was hoping to explore and do it from the GitHub interface, as well. I think it would help make upstream branches more discoverable within forked repos, too. But I appreciate your response and detailed instructions (and you're right that I was incorrect in saying you 'need to delete and re-fork' - I had just seen that as a popular answer online and forgot about the ability to do it from the command-line, initially).

[queenofcorgis]

We’re glad you could get this solved and we want to make sure others can do the same so we’ve reopened this discussion for better discoverability for our members.

[nuri-yoo]

For checking the sync status of all your forks at once from the terminal, I built branch-watch. bw forks lists every fork with ahead/behind commit counts vs. upstream — useful when you have many forks and want to quickly see which ones have drifted before deciding to sync.