How do I properly pull changes from a developer on GitHUB?

Question

I am fairly new to Git/GitHUB and I hired a programmer to make changes for me.

When I look under network/Fork Queue a number of his changes say "Will likely not apply cleanly".

What does this mean? Why wouldn't they apply 'cleanly'? Is it his code, my repo??

How can I apply these changes cleanly? I don't want to use the Apply option in the queue because of those errors.

Thanks!

Answer 1

"Will likely not apply cleanly" usually means that there will be merge conflict. In your repo, there were some changes to the same files that he was working on, so his changes can't be applied cleanly to yours. Your two repositories have diverged and the conflicting changes need to be resolved.

There are three things you can do:

1.) Try using a Pull Request, but it will probably say the same thing about not applying cleanly

2.) Merge them yourself on the command line:

$ git remote add hisusername git@github.com:hisusername/hisfork
$ git fetch hisusername
$ git merge hisusername/hisbranchname
...at this point there will probably be a merge conflict, which you need to resolve...
$ git push

3.) Ask him to rebase his changes on top of your latest changes, so they will apply cleanly. He will have to resolve the conflict.