Re: updating github.com forks, developing in remote branches and svn:eol-style equiv?

Hello!

Say on github.com I fork a repository.  Two weeks later, updates have
 been made to the original repository and now I want to update my fork.
  How do I do this?
 
 One possibility that occurs to me: I can create a new remote
 repository - let's say "upstream" - with the URL of the original
 repository and I can pull from that instead of the forked "origin"
 repository.  I can then push the updates to the forked repository.
 
 Is that the best way to do it, though?  It seems to me that I ought to
 be able to have my github.com fork pull updates itself without my
 having to pull and push with my own local repo.

  You should do it the way you described - via local repository, because you
  might need to resolve conflicts along the way.
  There is the "Fork Queue" feature on GitHub, you may give it a try.

 Also, I'm unclear how to develop in remote branches.  If I go to the
 "Switch/Checkout..." dialog I can switch to, say,
 "remotes/origin/random-branch".  I do that, make some changes to one
 of the new files and I then try to push those changes back.  In the
 local drop down menu I only see two local branches, however - "(no
 branch)" and the default branch.  Why is that?  If I just switched the
 branch to, say, "remotes/origin/random-branch", shouldn't I now be
 seeing that branch locally?

  To have a local branch you should create it:
  git checkout -b branchName remotes/origin/branchName
  Remote branches are there only to track the state of the remote repo,
  you should only commit to local branches and then push your work to
  remotes.

 Finally, is there any Git equivalent to SVN's svn:eol-style and if so
 how do I take advantage of it?

  git help config
  Look for "autocrlf", "safecrlf", etc.
  You can set these options globally or per repository.

---=====---
 Alexander