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Are pull requests baked into Git or is it a concept made up by GitHub?

Izzo
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    Both Git (the software) and GitHub (the web service) have a concept called "pull request", and unfortunately they are not exactly the same thing. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6235379/how-to-send-pull-request-on-git/6235394#6235394 – Mark McElroy Jul 26 '20 at 14:41

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There is a distinction between a concept and implementations of that concept.

The concept of "requesting a pull" is part of what sets DVCS systems apart from traditional version control systems. With a traditiona VCS, committing is limited to the small number of people with write access to a central repository. With a DVCS anyone can create commits, post them somewhere public, and request that they are pulled by someone who has write access to the main repository.

You could implement this concept entirely manually, push your commits to somewhere the general public can access them, and then somehow tell the person with write access about your commits.

Git comes from a world where e-mail lists are the primary collaboration tool. As such git has the "request-pull" command to assist in putting together an email requesting a pull.

Github on the other hand provides tooling built around git for web-based collaboration. As part of this they provide a pull-request mechanism within their web interface. Other web-based collaboration tools like gitlab and bitbucket also provide implementations of this feature.

plugwash
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When people talk about pull requests they're almost always talking about the GitHub feature.

dtip
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