Note: Pull request authors can give upstream repository maintainers, or those with push access to the upstream repository, permission to make commits to their pull request's compare branch in a user-owned fork. For more information, see "Allowing changes to a pull request branch created from a fork."
Modifying an active pull request locally
- Under your repository name, click Pull requests.
- In the list of pull requests, click the pull request you'd like to modify.
- In the merge box, click command line instructions. Follow the sequence of steps to bring down the proposed pull request.
- Optionally, to view proposed changes in GitHub Desktop, click open this in GitHub Desktop.
Modifying an inactive pull request locally
If a pull request's author is unresponsive to requests or has deleted their fork, the pull request can still be merged. However, if you want to make changes to a pull request and the author is not responding, you'll need to perform some additional steps to update the pull request.
Once a pull request is opened, GitHub Enterprise stores all of the changes remotely. In other words, commits in a pull request are available in a repository even before the pull request is merged. You can fetch an open pull request and recreate it as your own.
Anyone can work with a previously opened pull request to continue working on it, test it out, or even open a new pull request with additional changes. However, only collaborators with push access can merge pull requests.
- Under your repository name, click Issues or Pull requests.
- In the "Pull Requests" list, click the pull request you'd like to merge.
- Find the ID number of the inactive pull request. This is the sequence of digits right after the pull request's title.
- Open TerminalTerminalGit Bash.
- Fetch the reference to the pull request based on its ID number, creating a new branch in the process.
$ git fetch origin pull/ID/head:BRANCHNAME
- Switch to the new branch that's based on this pull request:
[main] $ git checkout BRANCHNAME > Switched to a new branch 'BRANCHNAME'
- At this point, you can do anything you want with this branch. You can run some local tests, or merge other branches into the branch.
- When you're ready, you can push the new branch up:
[pull-inactive-pull-request] $ git push origin BRANCHNAME > Counting objects: 32, done. > Delta compression using up to 8 threads. > Compressing objects: 100% (26/26), done. > Writing objects: 100% (29/29), 74.94 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done. > Total 29 (delta 8), reused 0 (delta 0) > To https://hostname/username/repository.git > * [new branch] BRANCHNAME -> BRANCHNAME
- Create a new pull request with your new branch.
Error: Failed to push some refs
The remote refs/pull/
namespace is read-only. If you try to push any commits there, you'll see this error:
! [remote rejected] HEAD -> refs/pull/1/head (deny updating a hidden ref)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.local:USERNAME/REPOSITORY.git'
Tip: When you remove or rename a remote reference, your local refs/pull/origin/
namespace will not be affected by calls to git-remote
.