How to Test a Pull Request Locally Before Merging.

So your repository got a new Pull Request?, You don't want to merge it before testing it out yourself locally on your machine. How do you go about it?

The pull request is available on this git ref pull/{ID}/head which you can fetch using this, where ID is the pull request id. In this tutorial, I would show you how to check, test, and make changes to a pull request before merging.

REQUIREMENTS

Make sure you have a cloned version of the repository on your machine, Check here to learn how to clone repositories from GitHub.
Have your cloned Repository integrated into your IDE preferably Visual Studio Code [In this tutorial, I used VsCode]
Be conversant with git commands

GETTING STARTED

Go to your repository folder
Initialize git (you can do that by right-clicking in the root folder)
Ensure your work tree is clean (you can do that by running git status)
Run the following commands to FETCH the pull request from GitHub where ID is the pull request's ID

git fetch origin pull/ID/head && git checkout FETCH_HEAD

Or, if you only want to cherry pick it, instead of checking it out, you can use

git fetch origin pull/ID/head && git cherry-pick FETCH_HEAD

Open your IDE (VsCode) Your folder structure should change now pending on the contents of the PR.

What you have now is the contents of the pull requests and not your master branch, run your checks and tests to determine if the pull request is worth merging.

At this point, you can do anything you want with this branch. You can run some local tests, or merge other branches into it, including master. Make modifications as you see fit!

Once satisfied git checkout master to return to the master branch.

You can also make changes to the pull request and push it back to GitHub as a new commit or pull request.

After making your changes:

git add --all
git commit -m "Modified PR"
git push origin BRANCHNAME (e.g master or test)

That's it, you have tested the pull request and made changes!

If this article helped you, please share!

How to Test a Pull Request Locally Before Merging.

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REQUIREMENTS

GETTING STARTED

Command Palette

Comments (2)

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REQUIREMENTS

GETTING STARTED