How can I contribute a patch to github?

Question

I don't want to fork a project, but I would like to submit patches for inclusion; should I do this on the issue queue?

Answer 1

You should fork the project. In Github, this is very cheap. This way, you can push your changes how you want to your repository, and then make a pull request to have them included in the official repository.

You can then delete your fork after that.

Answer 2

If you don’t fork a project, that means:

• you clone the original repo directly;
• you cannot push directly back to it (because you are not declared as a contributor).

Then you can indeed use the issue queue to reference a patch.
If said patch isn’t too big, you can directly copy/paste its textual form.
If not, you can copy it to some pastebin site and link it from your issue ticket.