Proposing changes to your work with pull requests

After you add changes to a topic branch or fork, you can open a pull request to ask your collaborators or the repository administrator to review your changes before merging them into the project.

About branches

Use a branch to isolate development work without affecting other branches in the repository. Each repository has one default branch, and can have multiple other branches. You can merge a branch into another branch using a pull request.

Creating and deleting branches within your repository

You can create or delete branches directly on GitHub.

About pull requests

Pull requests let you tell others about changes you've pushed to a branch in a repository on GitHub. Once a pull request is opened, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the base branch.

About comparing branches in pull requests

Pull requests display diffs to compare the changes you made in your topic branch against the base branch that you want to merge your changes into.

Creating a pull request

Create a pull request to propose and collaborate on changes to a repository. These changes are proposed in a branch, which ensures that the default branch only contains finished and approved work.

Creating a pull request from a fork

You can create a pull request to propose changes you've made to a fork of an upstream repository.

Using query parameters to create a pull request

Use query parameters to create custom URLs to open pull requests with pre-populated fields.

Changing the stage of a pull request

You can mark a draft pull request as ready for review or convert a pull request to a draft.

Requesting a pull request review

After you create a pull request, you can ask a specific person to review the changes you've proposed. If you're an organization member, you can also request a specific team to review your changes.

Keeping your pull request in sync with the base branch

After you open a pull request, you can update the head branch, which contains your changes, with any changes that have been made in the base branch.

Changing the base branch of a pull request

After a pull request is opened, you can change the base branch to compare the changes in the pull request against a different branch.

Committing changes to a pull request branch created from a fork

You can commit changes on a pull request branch that was created from a fork of your repository with permission from the pull request creator.