I want to start using git with GitHub for my upcoming project. Me and my teammate are planning to collaborate on this. I’m confused about the workflow though. Do both of us need to create our own separate forks and then constantly merge changes back and forth whenever someone updates the code? Or can we both work directly on the same main repository together? I’m new to GitHub collaboration so I’m not sure what the best approach would be for a two person team.
Yeah, you can work on the same repo together. Just add your teammate as a collaborator in the GitHub repo settings. Once they accept, you’ll both have push access. Make sure you talk about who’s working on which files so you don’t get merge conflicts. I’ve done this with small teams - it’s way easier than messing with forks. Save the fork workflow for open source stuff or big teams where you need tighter control.
For two people, just collaborate directly on the same repo. Add your teammate as a collaborator in the settings - they’ll get full push access without the forking hassle. Set up good branch habits right away though. I learned this the hard way when my teammate and I both pushed to main on our first project together. Total mess with conflicts everywhere. Now I create feature branches for everything, even tiny changes, then merge through pull requests. You get clean history plus code reviews before anything hits main. Way easier than fork-and-pull, which is really meant for bigger teams or open source stuff.
Yeah absolutely, just add your teammate as a collaborator in the repo settings.
But here’s what I’d actually do - automate everything from day one. I wasted way too many hours on merge conflicts and deployment headaches before I figured this out.
Set up workflows that handle integration, testing, and deployment when someone pushes changes. Create triggers that run tests, notify your teammate, and deploy to staging automatically.
This way you don’t have to manually coordinate who’s doing what or deal with conflicting changes. The automation does the heavy lifting while you build.
I do this for all my team projects now. Total game changer for productivity and keeps things smooth when deadlines hit.
totally agree! just invite your teammate as a collaborator to the main repo. way easier than forkin and merging all the time, especially for small teams like yours. less hassle and more coding time!