For some time now I've had my own (public) GitHub repository, really more of a gist repo but nobody explained that to me when I signed up some yarn ago. That's where I have uploaded code that may someday help somebody curious enough to look into it. I have no problem adding new files etc...but that's not what's bothering me.
Here's the problem: I was searching for answers to a particular issue and got directed to SO where I found a URL. The URL pointed to a file on gist.github.com, which looked promising. So I did a copy/paste from the file. No cloning, no forks, no pulls, no checkout, just an anonymous copy and paste to grab the file. (After all, I wasn't really sure it would do what I needed). It was just ~80 lines of C source. No external routines, no .DLLs or anything like that. Just some standard C headers and printf() needed. SSS, right? So far, so good.
The file wasn't exactly what I needed, but it was close. So I hacked\d\e\k\c\a\h edited the file and after a while it did what I needed, more or less. I had made some improvements (I hesitate to use the word "bugfixes", that's not quite right) and added some test code. It was now all of ~120 lines of C source. But now the problem surfaces.
I would like to update the source code on gist.github.com. After all, someone was kind enough to provide a solution to a basic problem, saving me time and effort. I would like to pay it forward so in the future we can both help somebody else. That should be pretty simple, right? I don't object to GitHub having complex capabilities, after all that's what you need in order to run a complex project. But simple things should be simple to do. Right? So, how?
What I tried: I brought up the URL I had used to initially copy the file and poked around. Nowhere did I see anything that would allow me to update the file. It can't be edited in place, at least not by me. Figuring I had missed something obvious, and because it's a good idea, I read the github QuickStart article "Understanding GitHub Actions". The article is a good tutorial for managing complex projects, but that's more, much more than I need: this is a gist, not a GitHub, issue. I've made good-faith efforts to find the answer but still can't seem to get it. All I want to do is check out a file and check in the updated version. Or just check in the updated version I now have. ediff reports about 5 difference sections so it would be pretty simple to review, if that's required. But I don't want to clone a whole repository or fork a, well, whatever it is you fork.
BTW, it's my birthday today. Really. I apologize for the longish post but I tried to give background and anticipate questions. This is my first SO posting, please be kind.
The best you can do is fork the gist and make your changes: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/editing-and-sharing-content-with-gists/forking-and-cloning-gists
Other people can see the forks on the original Gist, so they can still be led to yours and see your revisions.