Welcome to Forky — a fork-friendly development convention designed to make upstream code changes ✨ clean ✨, 😌 safe 😌, and 💥 merge-proof 💥.

When you work in a fork of a large codebase (like Telegram), it’s easy to fall into chaos: silent overwrites, messy merges, mystery bugs caused by untracked changes…

That’s where Forky, born inside Darlingram, comes in.

Forky is not just a tool. It’s a mindset.

It’s a simple but powerful convention:

🧠 “All changes to upstream code must be explicit, visible, and respectful.”

It means that all your edits, tweaks, and interventions into upstream files should be intentionally marked and structurally predictable. This enables:

• 💬 Safer merges from upstream
• 🔍 Automated detection of unmarked changes
• 🛠 Easier debugging (you always know what’s yours)
• 🤝 Cleaner collaboration on forks

Forky is built to grow — with tools, scripts, and possibly even plugins.

Forky was born when Darlingram — already a fork of Telegram — when we added a second copy of upstream Telegram as a Git submodule.

We forked Telegram, then added Telegram as a submodule inside the same repo.

That metaphysical moment — a fork watching its own origin — sparked the creation of Forky: a tiny guardian of merge sanity and diff cleanliness.

• 📎 Structured comment conventions — so your additions are always wrapped in safe, searchable markers.
• 🔍 Checker Gradle Task — validates that no upstream code was accidentally overwritten, and all inserted code is properly marked.

You can think of it like a seatbelt:

It won’t stop you from driving into a tree, but it’ll make sure you’re not flung into production headfirst 🚗🌳

Use the provided LiveTemplates.txt file to insert common fork patterns quickly and consistently.

💡 How to import:

1. Open LiveTemplates and select all text (Ctrl+A)
2. In Android Studio, go to File → Settings → Editor → Live Templates
3. Click the + button → Template Group → name it Forky
4. With the new group selected, press Ctrl+V to paste the templates
5. Click OK — your Forky templates are ready!

1. Don't touch upstream directly.
2. Wrap all changes with Forky markers using Live Templates or manually.
3. Run the Forky checker script to validate changes.
4. Stay smug during every upstream merge 😌

• 📖 Full documentation of patterns
• 💡 JetBrains plugin for syntax support, navigation & highlighting
• 🧪 CI integration
• 💬 Community feedback (maybe?)

Forky doesn’t stop you from changing upstream. Forky helps you avoid being eaten alive the next time upstream changes you.