If you are like me you find yourself cloning a repo, making some proposed changes and then deciding to later contributing back using the GitHub Flow convention. Below is a set of instructions I've developed for myself on how to deal with this scenario and an explanation of why it matters based on jagregory's gist.

Proper GitHub flow is this:

1. upstream = the original (forked) repo
2. origin = my fork

Current:

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

Should be:

git remote -v
origin	https://github.com/...my-repo (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/...my-repo (push)
upstream	https://github.com/...some-repo (fetch)
upstream	https://github.com/...some-repo (push)

Steps

1. Clone some repo (have already done this, instead of the forking first)

   git clone [email protected]
   

2. Fork their repo on GitHub (use the big green button)

3. In your local, rename your origin remote to upstream (ie. set the original repo as upstream)

   git remote rename origin upstream
   

4. Set your newly forked repo on GitHub as the new origin

   git remote add origin [email protected]
   

5. Set the tracking reference to your forked repo

   git push -u origin master
   
   # same
   git push --set-upstream origin master
   

---

We can also move our changes to a branch

1. Create new branch

   git checkout -b my-branch
   

2. Push our branch to our repo

   git push -u origin my-branch
   

3. Reset our master branch to the original repo's master (which is now our UPSTREAM)

   git checkout master
   
   git reset --hard upstream/master
   

Credits

https://gist.github.com/jpierson/b6c0815e9dd7078f6b8cc3cb9076ddf4