Exercise - Make a pull request

• 4 minutes

In the sandbox, make sure you’re still in the Alice directory, which is the top folder for Alice’s clone of the Cats repo. You can use the command pwd to verify your folder location.

pwd

Right now, there's nothing for Alice to pull because you haven't made any changes since Alice cloned the repo. You can prove that by using the following command, which shows the output Already up to date:

git pull

Make a change and submit a pull request

Alice starts working on the website. Alice's first decision is to change the site's background color. Alice experiments locally and ultimately chooses their favorite shade of light blue.

1. Set up an identity for Alice by running the following commands:

   git config user.name "Alice"
   git config user.email "alice@contoso.com"
   
   

   These config settings are stored in the repo in the .git/config file, so you won't have to enter them again. Each time you change to the Alice directory, you effectively assume Alice's identity.

2. Open the site.css file in the Alice/CSS directory:

   code CSS/site.css
   
   

3. To change the background color of the page to light blue, replace the second line in the file with the following statement:

   body { font-family: serif; background-color: #F0FFF8; }
   

   Then, save the file and close the editor.

4. Now, commit the change:

   git commit -a -m "Change background color to light blue"
   
   

5. Then, make a pull request back to the original repo:

   git request-pull -p origin/main .
   
   

6. Check the output. You should see output similar to the following example:

   The following changes since commit 2bf69ab0226d8d35efd1e92c83cd92c5cc09a7ae:
   
     Add simple HTML and stylesheet (2019-11-21 01:57:24 +0000)
   
   are available in the git repository at:
   
     .
   
   for you to fetch changes up to 95bbc3b6929953e9b04353920e97230b463022f0:
   
     Change background color to light blue (2019-11-21 02:33:48 +0000)
   
   ----------------------------------------------------------------
   Alice (1):
         Change background color to light blue
   
    CSS/site.css | 2 +-
    1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
   
   diff --git a/CSS/site.css b/CSS/site.css
   index caefc86..86d41e8 100644
   --- a/CSS/site.css
   +++ b/CSS/site.css
   @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
    h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-family: sans-serif; }
   -body { font-family: serif; }
   \ No newline at end of file
   +body { font-family: serif; background-color: #F0FFF8; }
   \ No newline at end of file
   

Create a remote and complete the pull request

Because your project directory and the Alice directory are on the same computer, you can pull directly from the Alice directory. In real life, the Alice directory would be on Alice's computer. You solve this situation by setting up a remote by using the git remote command. Then, you use that remote for pull and push requests. For this exercise, it's not practical to set up two machines to do these steps, so we'll set up a remote that uses a local path name. In reality, you would use a network path or URL instead.

1. Change back to the project directory and use the git remote command to create a remote named remote-alice that targets Alice's project directory:

   cd ../Cats
   git remote add remote-alice ../Alice
   
   

2. Now, execute a pull:

   git pull remote-alice main
   
   

   Notice that you have to specify a branch, main, in the pull command. You'll learn in the next lesson how to set up an upstream URL for the branch.

3. Check the output. You should see output like this example, which shows that you successfully completed the pull request:

   remote: Counting objects: 4, done.
   remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
   remote: Total 4 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
   Unpacking objects: 100% (4/4), done.
   From ../Alice
    * branch            main     -> FETCH_HEAD
    * [new branch]      main     -> remote-alice/main
   Updating 2bf69ab..95bbc3b
   Fast-forward
    CSS/site.css | 2 +-
    1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
   

The fun is just beginning! In the next lesson, you learn how to set up and use a shared repository, which makes collaborating simpler and more convenient.