Brief instructions for how to modify and push to someone else's PR on github

git-push-to-someone-elses-pr.md

How to Push to Someone Else's Pull Request

Let's say contributor has submitted a pull request to your (author) project (repo). They have made changes on their branch feature and have proposed to merge this into origin/master, where

origin -> https://github.com/author/repo.git

Now say you would like to make commits to their PR and push those changes. First, add their fork as a remote called contributor,

> git remote add contributor https://github.com/contributor/repo.git 

such that,

> git remote -v
origin      https://github.com/author/repo.git (fetch)
origin      https://github.com/author/repo.git (push)
contributor   https://github.com/contributor/repo.git  (fetch) 
contributor   https://github.com/contributor/repo.git  (push)

Next, pull down their list of branches,

> git fetch contributor

and create a new branch (contributor-feature) from the branch that they have created the PR from,

> git checkout -b contributor-feature contributor/feature

Now make any changes you need to make on this branch. If you'd like to rebase this PR on top of the master branch of the primary repository,

> git rebase origin/master

Finally, push the changes back up to the PR by pushing to their branch,

git push contributor contributor-feature:feature

Note that if you did a rebase, you'll need to add the --force (or -f) flag after push. The author of the PR also may need to explicitly allow you to push to their branch.

Helpful Links

• Adding commits to someone else's pull request
• Official GH Docs on pushing to a PR
• How to Rebase a PR

Related, If the contributor does not allow you to push to their branch, you can "commandeer" the PR using this:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66539231/how-to-change-the-owner-of-a-pr-on-github-how-to-commandeer-an-open-github-pr