Collaboration on GitHub

Collaboration on GitHub is a powerful way for multiple people to work together on the same project, using Git as the version control system. GitHub provides various tools and workflows that make collaboration efficient and organized.

The pieces

Branches keep concurrent work from colliding. Everyone works on their own branch, named for the change rather than for the person.

Issues are where work is recorded. A bug, a feature, a question — anything that needs doing or answering is an issue, so the reasoning survives after the conversation that produced it.

Pull requests are how a change is proposed. The diff, the discussion and the decision all live in one place, and the conversation is attached to the code rather than to a chat that scrolls away.

Reviews are the approval step, and branch protection turns "please review" into something the server enforces.

The workflow

git switch -c fix-login-redirect
# work, committing in small pieces
git push -u origin fix-login-redirect
gh pr create --fill

Reviewers comment on specific lines and either request changes or approve. When the checks pass and the review lands, merge — usually squashed — and delete the branch.

Forks

Contributing to a repository you cannot push to means forking it: GitHub makes your own copy under your account, you push your branch there, and open a pull request against the original. See PR from a Fork.

Keep branches short

A branch that lives for two weeks accumulates conflicts and makes review unpleasant. Merge or rebase into the base branch often, and keep main deployable so it is always safe to branch from and safe to return to. See Best Practices and Roadmaps for planning that work.

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