It has nothing to do with Git, it's just the name Github uses.
GitLab calles it a "Merge request", which is more fitting IMO.
Re:First Timers Only
by chunky1994 on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @12:00PM
(#10628105)
That's actually not true. git-pull (which is where the pull request comes from) is in the git manpages. Specifically it is: Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch. Which is basically a git fetch and merge from the submitters repository to the repository they are submitting to.
EDIT: Admittedly if you are talking specifically of the request part, then you are correct. However the name comes directly from git's pull command which is a feature of git.
Re:First Timers Only
by icebraining on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @05:45PM
(#10630256)
But it makes sense in git, since it's written from the perspective of the user pulling the commits, not from the user sending them.
Re:First Timers Only
by hyperchase on Wednesday November 25, 2015 @02:36PM
(#10629098)
Pull-request makes sense in Github, because the typical work-flow for open-source on Github is to fork the repo you want to contribute to. Hence, the maintainer has to pull the code from you.
Merge-request makes more sense in Gitlab because they're main use-case is as a self-hosted internal tool where developers most-likely are pushing all of their feature branches to a central repository and asking for the branch to be merged into the mainline branch.
You really do "commit a fix" but you commit it to your own git repository, then you make a "pull request" to the owner of the main repository, asking them to pull in your fix.