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Fork Workflow

Fork Workflow

When contributing to open source, you typically:

Fork the main repository
Clone your fork
Add the original repo as “upstream”
Push to your fork, PR to upstream

Rally automates this setup with the --fork flag.

Setting Up a Fork

rally onboard upstream/repo --fork myuser/repo

This configures:

origin → myuser/repo (your fork)
upstream → upstream/repo (main project)

How It Works

When you dispatch to an issue in a fork-configured project:

Rally fetches from upstream to get latest changes
Creates a worktree branching from upstream/main
Dispatches Copilot to work on the issue
Commits are pushed to your fork
PRs are opened against the upstream repo

Example Workflow

# 1. Set up fork relationship
rally onboard facebook/react --fork myuser/react

# 2. Dispatch to an issue in the upstream repo
rally dispatch issue 12345 --project react

# 3. Copilot creates branch and works on issue
# 4. When ready, PR is opened: myuser/react → facebook/react

Dashboard View

Fork workflows show in the dashboard like any other dispatch:

Rally Dashboard

 Issue/PR                                Status               Changes   Age
myuser/react (fork of facebook/react)
❯ Issue #12345  Fix rendering bug        🟡 ready for review   +23 -5   2h

Manual Setup

If you already have a fork cloned, you can onboard it and Rally will detect the fork relationship:

cd ~/projects/my-react-fork
rally onboard .
# Rally detects origin/upstream and configures accordingly