I am newbie in GitHub. I wonder why the option "Fork" is there when I have the option of cloning others' project and make my own repository on GitHub to extend it?
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Possible duplicate of [git branch, fork, fetch, merge, rebase and clone, what are the differences?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3329943/git-branch-fork-fetch-merge-rebase-and-clone-what-are-the-differences) – parsethis Feb 21 '17 at 06:24
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I guess the best answer I can think of is you might want to bring the fork back into the original branch, hence keeping it in the same repository.
I believe Forks were designed for playing with ideas or for suggesting changes to the owner of the repository, heres a link about it:
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Yes, you are right, you can clone another repo and do any desired stuff.
But after that you need merge your updates into original repo (share your improvements with whole world) - and exactly for this purposes you need fork.
As far as I know, only this is the most flexible way manage your updates with original repo. And only this way can avoid undesired commit into original repo (repo owner able manage all propositions about any changes).
cn007b
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Thank you so much for your reply! This is the answer I was searching for. – Tapashee Tabassum Urmi Feb 21 '17 at 06:34
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@tapasheeurmi Not sure that it is the best explanation, but key point here that fork is irreplaceable feature in github. – cn007b Feb 22 '17 at 09:43
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In addition to the other answers, it should be mentioned that Github allows you to easily sync new changes (such as bug fixes) from the repo you originally cloned from. The fork button is just a quicker way of doing many existing git features. Sync fork button on Github
Silas Maughan
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