# How to manage and update Slicer dependency forks?

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-manage-and-update-slicer-dependency-forks/1308>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** build\
**Created:** [October 27, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-manage-and-update-slicer-dependency-forks/1308 "2017-10-27T16:32:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jcfr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jcfr/32/17825_2.png) [@jcfr](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jcfr)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-manage-and-update-slicer-dependency-forks/1308/1 "2017-10-27T16:32:24Z")

</div>

It is convenient to have staging area to maintain and test patches that are being contributed back to official repositories.

The following wiki page outlines the naming convention for branches pushed to such fork: [https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Developers/ProjectForks](https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Developers/ProjectForks)

Also, by default when visiting most of these projects on GitHub you will now see the content of a `welcome` branch and its associated `README.md` including answers to questions like:

- What is this project ?
- What is the branch naming convention ?
- How to update the version of NameOfProject ?

We hope that this will enable more developer to contribute and help reduce the bus factor.

For example, see:

- [https://github.com/Slicer/ITK](https://github.com/Slicer/ITK)
- [https://github.com/Slicer/VTK](https://github.com/Slicer/VTK)
- [https://github.com/commontk/PythonQt](https://github.com/commontk/PythonQt)
- [https://github.com/commontk/DCMTK](https://github.com/commontk/DCMTK)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-manage-and-update-slicer-dependency-forks/1308/2 "2017-10-27T16:48:01Z")

</div>

Very nice. Thanks for setting this up @jcfr!