Collaborating with others to work on the same repository can be quite confusing. The fact that there are many different ways that you could work together does not help. This tutorial describes one way. It is what most open-source projects seem to have settled on. It finds the right balance between learning curve and usefulness.
This tutorial starts with the assumption that there is a project to which you would like to contribute. This project already exists as a repository on GitHub. You will make a copy of the repository, make changes and then ask for these changes to be integrated into the original repository.
We will use https://github.com/YOURPARTNERSNAME/zuri-velo to practice. In the language of GitHub "making a copy" is referred to as "forking". Requesting that your changes are integrated into the original repository goes by the name of "making a pull request".
Head over to the GitHub page of https://github.com/YOURPARTNERSNAME/zuri-velo. To fork it click the "Fork" button. Once you've done that, you can use your favorite git client to clone your copy of the repository:
# Clone your fork to your local machine
git clone https://github.com/YOURNAME/zuri-velo
Whenever you begin work on a new topic it's important that you create a new branch. This keeps your changes organised and separated from the master branch so that you can easily submit and manage multiple pull requests for every task you complete.
To create a new branch and start working on it:
# Checkout the master branch - just to make sure
git checkout master
# Create and switch to your new branch
git checkout -b adding_contributors
Now you can make your changes, in this case adding a section mentioning who has contributed to this repository. Then add and commit your changes as we did before:
# change the README to add contributors, then
git add README.md
git commit -m "Add section on contributors"
git push
If you now visit https://github.com/YOURPARTNERSNAME/zuri-velo the web interface will suggest to you that you can create a pull request. The GitHub documentation is pretty good: https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-requests/
Congratulations, you have made your first pull request!
Fork the zuri-velo repository, clone it to your laptop, create a new branch,
edit the README, add a section naming the collcommit your changes, push your
changes to GitHub and create a pull request.
To complete the next step, switch roles into being the owner of the original repository http://github.com/USER_A/zuri_velo. You should see a new pull request, it shows you the changes that were proposed and any messages from the person who created the pull request. After reviewing things, and maybe asking some follow up questions, you can click the big green button at the bottom of the page to accept the changes.
https://help.github.com/articles/reviewing-changes-in-pull-requests/
This is just a short tutorial, you can find more details and explanations in the GitHub documentation: