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2 out of 3 GitHub forks are completely empty
- josegonzalez 16y agoUnfortunately, this "research" is flawed. If you pull in changes just right, the network view does not show the forks as branch off. I believe cherry-picking commits does this, and rebasing onto those commits may also do the same. Feel free to correct me, but that's been my personal experience.
- cool-RR 16y agoSo... someone could make a fork, contribute code, and then not have his name shown on the Network view? Does this happen to actual contributors?
- albertzeyer 16y agoThe network view is not really intended to give a complete list of all contributors. It is intended to show the network of the different branches/forks. And it shows only a small time window (starting with the most recent time). So if there were commits earlier by other people and they were merged in, you will probably not see them. I think under commits, the contributors list should be the requested information.
- cool-RR 16y agoI'm pretty sure that the Network view is complete. I have around 3,000 commits over 2 years and they're all listed in my Network view: https://github.com/cool-RR/GarlicSim/network https://github.com/cool-RR/GarlicSim/network
- josegonzalez 16y agoThats not the same as you pulling in the commit in some way that obscures the contribution. I've done so on quite a few repositories (and I have enough repositories that all sorts of git nonsense has been tried). The big thing I try to conserve is attribution; I am not always the author of a changeset and I like to give credit where credit is due. That said, you can also delete a commit from the Network view by issuing the command "git push -f". So no, I can't credibly say all your commits are listed, although I would hope you don't commit that unholy sin.
- alanh 16y agoYes, it has happened to me (not that I am upset). For example, the project lead can manually apply my diffs, etc.
- dacort 16y agoJust because the repository is empty doesn't mean the forkers didn't modify the code. I've forked many a project, modified it locally, and not pushed it back up for a variety of reasons not limited to: laziness, abandonment, and shameful code that somebody would likely write a scornful blog post about. ;)
- tednaleid 16y agoI've done this too. Let's me create a github repo where "master" is fixed at a known version (to me) and I can clone it to any machine without worrying about remembering a the hash for the tag I want. I can push/pull at will and merge in changes from upstream whenever I desire. Sometimes local changes stay local, sometimes they get pushed out. Github and Bitbucket aren't only for working on code with other people, they also let us consume projects at the rate that we want to consume them.
- indrekj 16y agoI usually clone the original repository. And after I make my changes, then I fork it and push to it. Most of the times there is no point to fork it before making changes.
- 16s 16y agoI think some people fork because they just want a copy of it in case it goes away. That's what I've been told at least.
- jonursenbach 16y agoLast I remember, on Github, when you delete a repository any forked repositories are also deleted.
- 16s 16y agoOK. I did not know that. I've never tried it either.
- tlrobinson 16y agoReally?! That seems incorrect. I don't want my code disappearing because someone deleted their repository.
- jonursenbach 16y agoWell let's test it. https://github.com/jonursenbach/fork-this https://github.com/jonursenbach/fork-this Fork it, commit something to your fork and I'll delete my repo.
- izak30 16y agochallenge accepted: https://github.com/issackelly/fork-this/file-edit/ https://github.com/issackelly/fork-this/file-edit/
- jonursenbach 16y agoDeleted my repo. Looks like your fork is still alive and no longer marked as a fork.
- izak30 16y ago