4.5. Making and Approving Pull Requests

Pull requests (often referred to as simply a 'PR') are a way to merge changes from a new branch into the main branch.

• They allow teams to review and either accept or reject new changes
• Powerful tool to help prevent new changes from breaking old code
• Can also run regression tests in GitHub CI (Continuous Integration)
• For more info on GitHub CI, see the official documentation. 

Making a Pull Request

Pull requests rely on an official codebase. There are two different ways that a user can make a pull request:

1. Within the same repository, using another branch:
   • Create a new branch directly within the original repository, make your changes on this branch, and then open a PR from the new branch into the main branch of the same repository. 
   • ★ Use Case: Teams with write access to a repository.
2. From a fork of the repository:
   • Fork the main repository to your own GitHub account, create a new branch in your fork, make changes, and then open a PR from that fork back to the original repository.
   • ★ Use Case: Open source contributions where a contributor does not have write access to the main repository.  

In both cases, the user works independently, and when changes are ready to be implemented, they submit a pull request.

The repo maintainers are always responsible for reviewing and approving changes before merging into the official main branch.