aloofPenguinOct 29

Why do some people fork repos but make no changes to them?

https://lemmy.world/post/38012397

Why do some people fork repos but make no changes to them? - Lemmy.World

I’ve seen some projects on GitHub (howdy [https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy] being one of them that came to mind) where there are forks, but when I check the forks out they are either unchanged, or are behind by a few commits. I was wondering why this would happen. It couldn’t be for archival purposes, could it?

Show threadBehindTheBarrier
Fork it so i have my version, regardless if the original goes away. (Assuming Github doesn’t nuke all repos of course like they did with youtube-dl for a while)
Oct 30 at 7:41amWeb
Show threadArmainAPOct 30
GitHub nukes forks when the original repository is deleted. The correct way to handle your use case is by creating pull mirrors, ideally on a different host.
Show threadMichalOct 30

I didn’t know this, and I’m sure a lot other people don’t know this and that’s why they fork - to have their own copy of the repo, thinking they have full control over it.

I have forked projects in the past and IIRC i had to send a request to be disassociated from the original repo, otherwise all pull requests default to the original repo which is annoying.

Show threadulternoOct 30
You can simply