Can no longer merge a PR from a deleted fork

[smokhov]

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Hi, reposting this from a personal ticket 2223464 at the recommendation of GitHub support. Mostly to share a workaround and for the GitHub Support, if such practice exists, update the SO answers to the new official behavior. I guess it's mostly a documentation issue now for scenarios like mine.

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Original request:

Hi,

A PR I made from a user's repo has just been closed because the source repo was deleted,
but this is not an expected behaviour as far as I can tell from reading around.
The PR in question is:

NAG-DevOps/OpenCL-examples#3

The data and commits are still there, so I can trivially reproduce them:

https://github.com/NAG-DevOps/OpenCL-examples/pull/3/commits

but I'd rather merge it with a proper attribution. This is the first time I see such a behaviour
on GitHub. In the past it seems the target repo always had a copy in a hidden branch
that can be merged at any convenient time regardless if the fork is there or not.
Has this changed? What can I do about it since the data are still there?

On March 22, 2021 I had a case when the source repo of the PR was deleted, but the PR was still intact I and I was able to merge it:
OpenISS/OpenISS#62

Previous SO links about it:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21309262/can-i-delete-a-forked-github-repository-when-upstream-hasnt-accepted-my-pull-re?rq=3
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16080544/understanding-pull-requests-on-github-what-happens-when-the-requesting-reposit/16080833#16080833

None of this documentation I read describes this behaviour:

• https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/about-pull-requests
• https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/what-happens-to-forks-when-a-repository-is-deleted-or-changes-visibility

Thank you.

Reproduction Steps

• Have a repo with a common ancestor and 2-3 other sibling forks forked by other users than yourself
• Submit PRs from the other forks as yourself to your fork from the siblings and keep them open
• Delete one of the sibling forks and watch its PR auto-close

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My initial workaround:

I've found a workaround where I could recreate the local pull request from a branch instead using this as a reference:

• https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/reviewing-changes-in-pull-requests/checking-out-pull-requests-locally?platform=linux

So now have to do an extra step for closed PRs from deleted repos: fetch PR explicitly into a local branch; push the branch; create a new local PR with the original's PRs commits. More legwork for nothing, but works.

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Recommendations from GitHub Support (extract):

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Restoring the repo will allow the PR to be reopened. Note that in the typical case involving forks, this requires contacting GitHub Support.

You've presented a good workaround in scenarios where the repository can't be restored.

You can also recreate the PR on GitHub.com by viewing its history from the closed PR's head commit:

• https://github.com/NAG-DevOps/OpenCL-examples/tree/132f90478551db6d7cc3747c78b84a71abb12292

Then use the tree drop-down menu (the branch selector) to create a new branch from that history, and subsequently recreate the pull request. You might even reference the original PR by mentioning it in a comment.

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