Pushing same git changes to multiple branches

Question

I forked a github repo and would like to update an open pull request on the main repository. Before doing that however I want to do a dry run on my local box to make sure things will go smoothly when someone builds this project after the pull request is merged.

I'm not sure how to test this scenario however? I'm debating whether I should create a new branch on my forked repo, stage my changes and push to it.

From there, if I go to my local copy of the original repo and pull from my forked repository/new branch and try building, that should cover me?

If so, my question is how do I then update my original pull request with the changes I pushed to my forked repo's new branch? I've already staged and pushed them to the new branch, is there a way to 're-push' them to my original branch, so the pull request is updated?

Maybe I'm way off and there's a better approach to all this, in which case I'm all ears. Thank you.

Answer 1

I'm debating whether I should create a new branch on my forked repo, stage my changes and push to it.

That is the generally accepted best practice: isolate your change in a branch that you:

• can rebase on top of the updated upstream/master branch (upstream being the name of the remote referring to the original repo, that you can fetch, in order to make sure your modifications are still working on top of the most recent upstream history).
  See "Pull new updates from original Github repository into forked Github repository"
• or push to your remote fork (origin), for making a PR from it.
  See "Couple tips on pull-requests" and "Git working fork with updates".