I’ve seen some projects on GitHub (howdy being one of them that came to mind) where there are forks, but when I check the forks out they are either unchanged, or are behind by a few commits. I was wondering why this would happen. It couldn’t be for archival purposes, could it?

  • expr@programming.dev
    2·
    11 hours ago

    Heh, guilty. Pretty much always something where I had an ambition to make a change but got distracted or didn’t have time to work on it.

  • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev
    6·
    15 hours ago

    Fork it so i have my version, regardless if the original goes away. (Assuming Github doesn’t nuke all repos of course like they did with youtube-dl for a while)

    • ArmainAP@programming.dev
      9·
      15 hours ago

      GitHub nukes forks when the original repository is deleted. The correct way to handle your use case is by creating pull mirrors, ideally on a different host.

      • Michal@programming.dev
        5·
        13 hours ago

        I didn’t know this, and I’m sure a lot other people don’t know this and that’s why they fork - to have their own copy of the repo, thinking they have full control over it.

        I have forked projects in the past and IIRC i had to send a request to be disassociated from the original repo, otherwise all pull requests default to the original repo which is annoying.

        • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
          3·
          10 hours ago

          You can simply git clone on your system and push it to whatever other remote you want. It should not be associated to the origin in that way.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    20·
    24 hours ago

    Fork repo, make local changes intending to push to fork for PR, never push anything. Very common.

    Also, SO MANY SITES have the button that says “Fork me on GitHub!” that is often wonder if people think it’s something that it isn’t.

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    38·
    2 days ago

    In my personal workflow, I fork GitHub and Codeberg repos so that my local machine’s “origin” points to my fork, not to the main project. And then I also create an “upstream” remote to point to the main project. I do this as a precursor before even looking at a code on my local machine, as a matter of course.

    Why? Because if I do decide to draft a change in future, I want my workflow to be as smooth as possible. And since the norm is to push to one’s own fork and then create a PR from there to the upstream, it makes sense to set my “origin” to my fork; most established repos won’t allow pushing to a new topic branch.

    If I decide that there’s no commit to do, then I’ll still leave the fork around, because it’s basically zero-cost.

    TL;DR: I fork in preparation of an efficient workflow.

  • einkorn@feddit.org
    60·
    2 days ago

    One reason I can think off the top of my head is archiving: Nothing prevents the owner of a repo from simply deleting it.

    • nous@programming.devEnglish
      35·
      2 days ago

      While true and some will do it for that reason, I bet most do it simply because the friction to forking is so low.

      Some might have an intention to work on it but then don’t or might start looking at it in detail then give up or get to busy or lose interest.

      Others might just click it to save it for later.

      And don’t forget all the people that click it by accident.

      It’s not like it is a big investment to click the button.

    • locuester@lemmy.zipEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      I do this. I have an instance of gitea running internally that mirrors any repo I have on github. Super nice for archiving things of importance or even as a bookmark. Sometimes I do it because of fear of censorship like dcma and stuff for software I use.

      • bruce965@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 days ago

        Would you mind to share how to copy your setup? In particular how to mirror all your GitHub repos, do you have to manually add them to Gitea one by one?

        • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
          12·
          2 days ago

          I’d recommend Forgejo rather than Gitea for a new install these days. It’s a Gitea fork that was soft-forked (still compatible) until recently but is now moving to a hard fork model and has significantly more development momentum and a bigger community behind it. Still basically the same thing for most purposes, but I think Forgejo’s approach to actions/runners makes way more sense and they’ve started adding features like ActivityPub federation that I think will put them in a good position in the future.

          • Ŝan@piefed.zipEnglish
            38·
            1 day ago

            Sourcehut is anoþer option. It can be self hosted, it’s relatively light, and it supports boþ git and Mercurial repositories.

        • hosaka@programming.dev
          5·
          2 days ago

          Forgejo has auto mirroring built in, it’ll periodically sync the repos you add. The disadvantage is you have to add them manually. Initially I wanted a list of my started github repos synced to my forgejo instance and just added them one by one. A simple cron job might be enough to do that, but last time I checked github didn’t have an API for fetching started repositories.

        • locuester@lemmy.zipEnglish
          41·
          2 days ago

          Quick little script I run as a cron job. Script was authored by Claude Code. I’m not home right now but any llm can probably get you 95% of the way there. Remind me in a couple days if you don’t get something. Sorry I’m traveling right now

          Edit: some details… it uses the gitea api repos/migrate endpoint after getting a list of repos from the github api. Super simple.

          You could prob do in real-time with some webhooks but I don’t need anything like that. I just need a one time migration.

          Also, mine doesn’t keep in sync with the upstream yet. I need another process to do that.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    19·
    2 days ago

    Maybe they planned to make some changes, but never got around to them or at least didn’t get them to work the way they intended.

  • who@feddit.orgEnglish
    19·
    2 days ago

    When looking for activity, are you only checking for the number of commits ahead/behind, or are you also checking for new branches?

    A common workflow is to fork a project, clone it locally, add some work on a new branch, push it to your fork, and then create a pull request from the new branch. None of that will add commits to the default branch.

  • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
    12·
    2 days ago

    Maybe some people don’t delete the fork after their PR is done.

    In my case, I found another explanation.

    Sometimes, a random person comes and forks one of my repos. I check their profile, and it’s a techbro student with hundreds of forked repos without any commits. With their bio referencing AI or some shit.

    I’m pretty sure these people fork a lot of repos just to pad their CV or something. Make it look like you have a lot of repos. Because when you go to someone’s profile, it is not clear that a repo is a fork instead of their own creation.

    • tyler@programming.dev
      6·
      2 days ago

      When you visit someone’s profile on github it defaults to source. It won’t show forks at all for a ‘normal’ visitor to a profile. You have to explicitly clear the filter to see forks.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 days ago

        Maybe they changed the defaults. I stopped using GitHub after they trained their AI over private repos.

        But I remember clearly that I was annoyed when looking at my own repos because my forks (for actually doing PRs) would show at the top instead of my own repos.