I created my first Debian package (automx) in the last few weeks. It is already in SID and I’m happy to report that I’ve already got my first bug report (#731233). automx is available via Github. So it was easy to file a pull request to fix the problem in upstream too. But how can such a pull request be created? Fear not, it’s very easy.
I assume you already have a Github Account. Navigate to the repository you want to create a pull request for and press the Fork-Button. A new forked repository will be created for your user.
Now clone the repository to your local machine to make the changes.
git clone https://github.com/<your-user>/<repository-name>
Create a new bugfix branch. Name it for example fix_automx-test_install.** This is very important. Do not create the fix in the master branch.**
git checkout -b fix_automx-test_install
Let’s imagine the changes you need to make are in the file setup.py. Make your changes, add the changed file and commit it to the bugfixing branch.
git add setup.py
git commit -v setup.py
After the changes are commited it is time to push the local changes to your Github repository. We need to push the bugfix branch so we include the name of it in the push command.
git push origin fix_automx-test_install
On the Github page of your repository you should by now see the new branch. Press the green Check and Create pull request button next to the branch. That’s it.
Update: My pull request was merged already, yeah! And I haven’t tested it yet, but to update your Github fork with the original repository follow the steps here.