How to update a GitHub repo fork in the web interface without creating a merge/squash commit

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All the solutions to syncing fork master to upstream master through GitHub web interface I've found suggest ways that will create a new commit in fork master. And that is by definition not syncing because they will differ after this. In theory it should be possible because whenever I use the Edit button on a file in upstream repo it creates a perfectly synced new branch in my fork in a moment. But simply creating a PR for getting upstream master in my fork gives three options:

Create a merge commit.: new commit -> Not syncing.
Squash and merge: new commit -> Not syncing.
Rebase and merge: unavailable even though I didn't touch the fork master, see screenshot below.

What conflicts? How is it possible? Is there really no way?

Ok, I'm only 99.99% sure I didn't change the master in my fork, how do I find out which commit is different using CLI on local clone if they do differ?

It's not a duplicate of How do you update a GitHub repo fork in the web interface? because that one doesn't require there to be no new commits.

Best Answer

For now it seems impossible and the relevant issues are:

https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/438

https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/121

https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1122

Related Solutions

How to Update a GitHub Repo Fork via Web Interface

You can try and reverse how pull requests happen.

Go to your fork
Issue a Pull Request

By default this will be your fork on the right (head repo) requesting to push its commits and changes to the original repo (base repo) on the left.
Click the drop down for both base repo and head repo and select each other's repos.

You want yours listed on the left (accepting changes) while the original repository is on the right (the one with changes to push). As illustrated in this image:
Send the pull request

If your fork has not had any changes, you should be able to automatically accept the merge.

If your code somehow conflicts or is not quite clean enough, then this will not work to update via the GitHub web interface and you will need grab the code and resolve any conflicts on your machine before pushing back to your fork.

GitHub – How to Merge Commit from Different Fork of the Same Repo

You should be able to just pull down the other repo and have it merge with yours.

git pull {url-of-repo-with-commit-you-want-to-merge-in}

This will fetch the repo mentioned and have it automatically fast forward merge in any commits you don't have into yours.

So in your example, while on your master branch, or if you want to test it out on some other branch:

git pull git://github.com/dantipa/history.js.git
remote: Counting objects: 9, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1/1), done.
remote: Total 5 (delta 4), reused 5 (delta 4)
Unpacking objects: 100% (5/5), done.
From git://github.com/dantipa/history.js
 * branch            HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
Updating e84ad00..e2d5251
Fast-forward
 scripts/uncompressed/history.js |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

Now with the other commit merged with yours you can push back up to your own remote with that extra change.

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