Set up your fork#

First you follow the instructions for Making your own copy (fork) of Matplotlib.

Overview#

git clone https://github.com/your-user-name/matplotlib.git
cd matplotlib
git remote add upstream https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git

In detail#

Clone your fork#

Clone your fork to the local computer with git clone https://github.com/your-user-name/matplotlib.git
Investigate. Change directory to your new repo: cd matplotlib. Then git branch -a to show you all branches. You'll get something like:
```
* master
remotes/origin/master
```
This tells you that you are currently on the master branch, and that you also have a remote connection to origin/master. What remote repository is remote/origin? Try git remote -v to see the URLs for the remote. They will point to your github fork.

Now you want to connect to the upstream Matplotlib github repository, so you can merge in changes from trunk.

Linking your repository to the upstream repo#

cd matplotlib
git remote add upstream https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git

upstream here is just the arbitrary name we're using to refer to the main Matplotlib repository at Matplotlib github.

Just for your own satisfaction, show yourself that you now have a new 'remote', with git remote -v show, giving you something like:

upstream     https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git (fetch)
upstream     https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git (push)
origin       https://github.com/your-user-name/matplotlib.git (fetch)
origin       https://github.com/your-user-name/matplotlib.git (push)