A server-side copy of a repository in which a contributor's changes stay separate until a pull request brings them into the original. Forks suit projects with many occasional contributors; small teams generally manage with branches alone.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Fork in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Repository
A group of images or artefacts in a container registry that share one name and differ by tag. Names can include slash-separated namespaces, but every repository is handled separately.
- Contributor
Built-in Azure role with full management of resources, except that it can't give access to anyone.
- Pull request
In Azure Repos or GitHub, a proposal to merge one branch into another, at which point reviewers and branch policies or protection rules come into play.
- Contributors
Most Azure DevOps users belong to this default project group, which lets them read and change code, work items and pipelines but not administer anything. Don't confuse it with Azure RBAC's Contributor.
- MANAGE
A Unity Catalog privilege allowing a principal to grant and revoke access on an object, hand over its ownership and drop it, all without being the owner. It gives no data access by itself and is not part of
ALL PRIVILEGES.
Related terms
- Comment triggers
For pull requests from GitHub, Pipelines can hold builds until a team member comments
/azp run(or/AzurePipelines run), keeping fork builds under control. - pull_request_target
A GitHub Actions event that executes in the base repository's context, with secrets and a GITHUB_TOKEN that can write, even when the pull request comes from a fork. Workflows using it should therefore never check out and execute code from the pull request.
- Push ruleset
A GitHub ruleset for private or internal repositories, applying across the entire fork network, that refuses pushes according to file path, path length, file extension or file size.