---
title: 'Pull requests and Git flow'
license: 'CC-BY-SA-4.0'
origin_url: 'https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Documentation/src/commit/85d333f48badb27f8e4371263db3354f70836dfd/content/collaborating/pull-requests-and-git-flow.md'
origin_author: 'Codeberg Docs Contributors'
origin_title: 'Pull requests and Git flow'
---

## Benefits of a pull request based workflow

> **_TLDR:_** _Keep an eye on your repository and organization permissions. Don't take sweets from strangers. Use pull requests. Easy to review, easy to manage, and only the project maintainers/owners have permission to merge them._

Although it is perfectly possible to use a Git project on Codeberg just as single shared central repository for individuals and teams, a collaborative workflow based on pull requests provides many benefits:

- The "hot" project repository requires only very few maintainers with full rights to sign off pull requests. Contributors can easily work on forked repositories.
- Each pull request collects the full edit history for a fix or feature branch. Contributors can squash this, or keep it, just as they prefer.

## Create a pull request

Let's say, you would like to contribute to our "examples" project [knut/examples](https://codeberg.org/knut/examples).

First, fork the project you would like to work on, by clicking the `Fork` button in the top-right corner of the project page:

![Fork a project](../_images/user/pull-request/fork-button.png)

Then, clone it onto your local machine. We assume that [you have set up your SSH keys](/security/ssh-key). This has to be done only once:

```shell
git clone git@codeberg.org:<YOURCODEBERGUSERNAME>/examples.git
```

Now, let's create a feature branch, do some changes, commit, push, edit, commit, push, ..., edit, commit, push:

```shell
git checkout -b feature
# do some changes
git commit -m "first feature"
git push    # here you get asked to set your upstream URL, just confirm
# do more work, edit...
git add new_file.png
git commit -m "second feature introducing a new file"
git push
# ...
git commit -m "more work, tidy-up"
git push
```

Now you can create a pull request by visiting the main repository page and clicking on the `New Pull Request` button.

![Create a pull request](../_images/user/pull-request/pull-request-button.png)

This button is automatically shown if:

- You are the pusher on a branch that still exists and that is not the default branch
- The push must occurred within the last 6 hours
- There is no open PR for this branch

## Reviews

On the pull request page, the `Files Changed` tab shows a `Review` button that can be used to approve the pull request or request changes.

![Review a pull request](../_images/user/pull-request/pull-request-review-global.png)

Next to each changed line, a `plus` button allows to add a comment on that specific line, for instance to suggest a modification.

![Review comment on a line](../_images/user/pull-request/pull-request-review-line.png)

When a pull request contains multiple commits, the button to the left of the `Review` button can be used to only review a single commit.

![Review a single commit](../_images/user/pull-request/pull-request-review-commit.png)

## Review requests and code owners

On the right-hand sidebar of the pull request page there is a `Reviewers` section. Clicking its title will open a dropdown menu using which you may request a review from one or more repository collaborators.

![Reviewers panel](../_images/user/pull-request/pull-request-reviewers.png)

Review requests may additionally be automated by adding a `CODEOWNERS` file either to the root of the repository, or the `docs` or `.forgejo` directories.

Lines in this file represent rules. Each rule consists of a [Go-formatted regular expression](https://pkg.go.dev/regexp/syntax) matching paths to changed files, followed by the names of one or more users and/or organization teams, all separated by whitespaces. The regular expression may also be prepended with an exclamation mark (`!`) to create a negative rule.

Users are referenced by their usernames. Teams are referenced by the name of the organization, followed by a slash (`/`) and the name of the team. Both may optionally be prepended with an `@` sign.

When a pull request is submitted, the changes are checked against the rules in the `CODEOWNERS` file. When the path to any of the changed files matches the regular expression of a non-negative rule, a review of the pull request is automatically requested from all users and/or teams referenced by the rule. Negative rules do the opposite – reviews are requested when any of the changed files _do not match_ the regular expression.

A `CODEOWNERS` file may contain empty lines and comments, which begin with a hash (`#`) character.

An example `CODEOWNERS` file may look like this:

```
# Request review from User001 whenever anything in `src` changes
src/.* @User001

# Request review from the editors team in MyOrg whenever anything
# in `docs` changes
docs/.* @MyOrg/editors

# Request review from User002 whenever anything but `README.md` changes
!README\.md User002
```

## Keep it up-to-date: rebase pull requests to upstream

Sometimes the upstream project repository is evolving while we are working on a feature branch, and we need to rebase and resolve merge conflicts for upstream changes into our feature branch. This is not hard:

In order to track the `upstream` repository, we'll add a second remote that is pointing to the original project. This has to be done only once:

```shell
git remote add upstream git@codeberg.org:knut/examples.git
```

You can also use the SSH variant here for public projects, if you want to be
able to pull without specifying your credentials.

Now, let's pull from `upstream`, and rebase our local branch against the latest `HEAD` of the upstream project repository (e.g. the `main` branch):

```shell
git pull --rebase upstream main
git pull
```

That's it. You can now push your changes, and create the pull request as usual by clicking on the "New Pull Request" button.

## A friendly note on owner rights, and force push permissions

Please keep in mind that project owners can do _everything_, including editing and rewriting the history using `force-push`. In some cases, this is a useful feature
(for example to undo accidental commits or clean up PRs),
but in most cases a transparent history based on a pull request based workflow is surely preferable,
especially for the default branches of your project where other people rely on intact history.

**Warning** If you accidentally leaked sensitive data, say, leaked credentials,
keep in mind that commits stay directly accessible, e.g. from the user
activity tab or a Pull Request feed, for a while.
Please contact us if you really need to remove such data from the public.