Forking a repository is similar to copying a repository, with two major differences:
- You can use a pull request to suggest changes from your user-owned fork to the original repository in its GitHub instance, also known as the upstream repository.
- You can bring changes from the upstream repository to your local fork by synchronizing your fork with the upstream repository.
You can fork a private or internal repository to your personal account or an organization on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance where you have repository creation permissions, if settings for the repository and your enterprise policies allow forking.
您可以使用 GitHub Desktop 复刻仓库。 有关详细信息，请参阅“从 GitHub Desktop 克隆存储库并对其创建分支”。
Deleting a fork will not delete the original upstream repository. You can make any changes you want to your fork—add collaborators, rename files, generate GitHub Pages—with no effect on the original.
In open source projects, forks are often used to iterate on ideas or changes before they are offered back to the upstream repository. When you make changes in your user-owned fork and open a pull request that compares your work to the upstream repository, you can give anyone with push access to the upstream repository permission to push changes to your pull request branch (including deleting the branch). This speeds up collaboration by allowing repository maintainers the ability to make commits or run tests locally to your pull request branch from a user-owned fork before merging. You cannot give push permissions to a fork owned by an organization.
私有复刻继承上游或父仓库的权限结构。 这有助于私有仓库的所有者保持对其代� �的控制。 例如，如果上游仓库是私有的，并授予团队读/写访问权限，则同一团队对该私有上游仓库的任何复刻拥有读/写权限。 专用分支仅继承团队权限（而不是个人权限）。
If you want to create a new repository from the contents of an existing repository but don't want to merge your changes to the upstream in the future, you can duplicate the repository or, if the repository is a template, you can use the repository as a template. For more information, see "Duplicating a repository" and "Creating a repository from a template".