What's the deal with the 'Fork me on Github' banner?

[eah13]

@EmBeeBee I think this was a question you brought up. The little banner has a history. Might work well as a post- tell the history and find some examples out in the wild.

[ghost]

Yes, this was my question! I'm up for the task, is it possible to use this issue as a "store your stuff" location for things I find?

[ghost]

Also, this was my main reason for asking why it was called "forking" instead of "cloning" or "copying:" From the new user's standpoint, "forking" something doesn't really denote what the action accomplishes. Compare it to another feature on this website, "follow." You can 'follow' people on GitHub, which means you get updates and notices on their activities. This makes sense - the vocab and its definition are related in an obvious way. It's not the same with "fork" (at least, at first glance)

[ghost]

Useful website sources: http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-branching-and-forking-in-the-enterprise-why-fork/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3329943/git-branch-fork-fetch-merge-rebase-and-clone-what-are-the-differences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jGUFpWYm60
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ch03.html#_forking_a_project
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6286571/git-fork-is-git-clone?rq=1

[ghost]

As best as I can understand it, based on the above sources, "forking" is different from "cloning" based on where the 'copy' of the repository lives.

If you clone a repository, it means that you're making a copy of it and storing it on your personal computer's hard drive, and therefore if you work on a piece of the repository and want to submit a change (aka make a pull request), you have to upload the edited file back onto the GitHub server.

If you fork a repository, though, it means that you make a copy that lives on the GitHub server (so no time or data is lost between downloading and uploading the repository between your computer and GitHub). The origin of the term seems to come from the concept of 'branching' in git workflow. By forking a repository, you're creating your own work branch off of the main branch (aka the original repository...?) to mess around with. It lives on the GitHub server, which makes it easier to pull back into the original repository/webpage code after you make edits to the code.

Does this sound anything close to what "forking" is?

[eah13]

You got it, and this is a feat of conceptual agility!

A 'Fork' is a concept that Github has introduced that is just a 'Clone' of a repository from its original home to your user account.

Branches happen inside repositories.

We'll discuss more tomorrow morning.

Regarding gathering links, you might consider doing that in a post in your own repo, so you can publish it via a pull request when it's done. This topic is great- document what you've learned for others!