Pull Requests
📌 Covered in this chapter:
Creating a PR · Base & Compare Branches · Linking Issues · Merging PRs
Propose, describe, and merge changes through GitHub's pull request workflow — the core of collaborative development.
1Pull Requests — What You'll Learn
Propose, describe, and merge changes through GitHub's pull request workflow — the core of collaborative development.
Here's everything this chapter covers, in the order you'll learn it:
- What a pull request (PR) is
- Why teams use pull requests instead of direct pushes
- Creating a feature branch
- Pushing that branch to GitHub
- Opening a pull request
- Choosing the base branch (target)
- Choosing the compare branch (source)
- Writing a clear PR title
- Writing a useful PR description
- Linking related issues
- Draft pull requests for work-in-progress
- Pull request templates
- Requesting reviewers
- Merging an approved pull request
- Deleting the branch after merge
2Best Practices & Common Pitfalls
💡 Key things to remember:
- A pull request is really a proposal + a discussion thread — it lets teammates review, comment on, and approve changes before they land in main.
- Keep pull requests small and focused on one thing — small PRs get reviewed faster and more thoroughly than huge ones.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q What's the most important thing to understand about pull requests?
Focus on: Creating a PR · Base & Compare Branches · Linking Issues · Merging PRs. These are the core building blocks this chapter's examples are built around, and they show up repeatedly in later chapters of this course.
Q Is pull requests something I'll use often in real projects?
Yes — every concept in this chapter reflects a real, everyday part of professional Git and GitHub workflows, not just a theoretical exercise.