How can I make a second fork of a GitHub project?

Question

I want to fork a github project to fix a couple of issues and then send a pull request.

The problem I'm running into is that I've already forked the project to adapt it for another user base.

Is it possible to create a second fork? If so, how?

When I try to fork now it just takes me to the previously created fork.

Why not just create a new branch from master, fix stuff and pull request that branch to the original projects master? — noMAD, Jan 23 '15 at 22:28
The ugliest solution I can think of is to create a new GitHub account. I do not seriously suggest this. I suspect, as @noMAD suggests, that this is a job for a branch, not a fork. — Keith Thompson, Jan 23 '15 at 22:39
@noMAD that would work since I'm a contributor. Just curious, would that solution work if I was not a contributor? — pixelfairy, Jan 23 '15 at 22:50
@pixelfairy, what do you mean by "contributor"? If you submit a pull request, isn't that contributing by definition? — Chris, Jan 24 '15 at 04:16
@Chris ...I mean that I could just commit and push without making a pull request, but I want to do it the offical way and I want somebody else to review the changes before I push to a public project. — pixelfairy, Jan 24 '15 at 08:52

pixelfairy · Answer 1 · 2016-12-23T05:28:36.913

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There is no way to have two forks of the same GitHub project unless you use two different GitHub accounts.

So:

Create a separate GitHub account (and verify the email)
Fork the project
Invite your main GitHub account as a "Collaborator" (from the settings)

You may need to add the extra step of creating an organization with the new GitHub account and inviting your main github account as an owner of the organization (also make sure your new fork is in that new organization). This will let you do things like deploy automatically to a Heroku app that is connected to your main GitHub account.

Why can't we just have multiple forks???

edited Dec 23 '16 at 05:28

answered Nov 01 '16 at 19:43

pixelfairy

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According to the terms of service on Github, you're not allowed to have a second free account. This definitely limits your options to forking projects unless you pay. – Liggliluff Mar 15 '19 at 19:16
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@Liggliluff -- Thank you for reading the Github TOS and letting us know. – pixelfairy Jun 21 '19 at 19:24
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It's been 3 years since this answer, has there been an update? – SantoshGupta7 Oct 01 '19 at 02:19
@SantoshGupta7 https://stackoverflow.com/a/19279822 maybe look at this answer – awadhesh14 Jan 19 '21 at 07:13

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 24 '15 at 13:22

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I mean that I could just commit and push without making a pull request, but I want to do it the offical way and I want somebody else to review the changes before I push to a public project.

GitHub pull requests do not need to be submitted from a fork; they work within a single repository as well:

Pull requests are especially useful in the fork & pull model because they provide a way to notify project maintainers about changes in your fork. However, they're also useful in the shared repository model where they're used to initiate code review and general discussion about a set of changes before being merged into a mainline branch.

There's nothing stopping you from creating a pull request even if you don't technically have to. This is often considered a best practice, and GitHub's own Flow model is largely based on pull requests.

Creating a pull request within a single repository is very similar to creating one from a fork:

Create a feature branch and push your work to that branch on GitHub
In the GitHub web UI, switch to your feature branch
Click the "Compare" & review button

answered Jan 24 '15 at 13:22

Chris

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Thanks! That's really good information. This definitely helps me with my immediate goals. ...Is the official answer that I can't create more than one fork? What will happen if I want to make a fork for another user-base? Would I need to first transfer ownership of the other (first) fork? – pixelfairy Jan 24 '15 at 17:47
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@pixelfairy, the official answer is "sort of". As far as I know, there is no way to create another fork under your account *using the web UI's fork button*. (You may want to investigate [organizations](https://github.com/blog/674-introducing-organizations).) But when it comes down to it, a fork is just a copy of a repository. You can easily create a new empty repository, call it `project-fork`, and push to it. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12338240/how-can-i-fork-the-original-repo-when-ive-already-forked-a-different-fork for a more thorough answer. – Chris Jan 24 '15 at 17:54
I like the work-around! For the work at hand I will follow the GitHub Flow Model and then if I want to fork the codebase for a new userbase I will just create a new repo and push to it. Thanks!! – pixelfairy Jan 26 '15 at 01:53
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Sometimes you just need two forks. – pixelfairy May 22 '17 at 23:04
Some times you could figure out how to do what you want with a single fork, but it is (or rather it would be) much, much, simpler to do it with two forks. – Mars Sep 26 '17 at 18:02

Serge · Answer 3 · 2022-04-13T12:12:55.520

The best way, recommended by github manual, is use command line git, mirror clone your repo and push it to your github.

https://docs.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/duplicating-a-repository

If you strongly prefer GitHub web interface to the command line, a GUI friendly workaround is create a new organization and fork to that new organization.

Another GUI way I can think of is to declare a fork as a template repo using repo's setting so you can create as many forks as you need.

ccpizza · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-13T07:47:17.293

The trick is not to use the master branch to create pull requests. Then you won't need to create multiple forks since you can make as many branches as you need and make pull requests against each branch independently.

Given a clean forked repo, create a dedicated branch and use that branch for the pull request.

You can create branches from the web UI (although it is not obvious).

Click the branch selection dropdown, type the new branch name in the input field, and then you'll see a clickable link Create branch: <new-branch-name> as shown below. The tricky UI part is that it might not be very obvious you should click the "create branch: xyz..." — it is NOT displayed as a button or as a hyperlink, and there is NO indication that this is a clickable link. Moreover, there is NO hint whatsoever that a branch can be created until you type in the search box — anyone would probably assume that the search box is used exclusively for searching branches, and not for creating them.

In case you already made changes directly in your fork's master branch then consider moving those changes into a dedicated branch and hard resetting the master branch to the original remote so that you keep it clean for synching with the upstream repo.

How can I make a second fork of a GitHub project?

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