Git fork with different structure

Question

I pulled a GitHub repository and added it as a project within VisualStudio. The VS solution contains other projects which are required by the modifications I did to the repository in the first project. Currently, these are separate repositories:

my_solution (<- this should become my new repo without losing the possibility to pull changes from the original repository into locally_forked_project)
  locally_forked_project (repo)
  dependency1 (repo)
  dependency2 (repo)

Now, I'd like to create a fork of the original project on GitHub based on my VS solution. I want to be able to pull commits from the original repository and I would like to avoid using multiple repositories on GitHub.

The only way I know of are submodules but as far as I know, these would require multiple repositories on GitHub. Is there a solution to this problem?

Is this possible by any means? Are there any alternatives to using multiple repositories?

Answer 1

Is this possible without two separate repositories (master and submodule)?

Not really: your main repo must keep track of which version (gitlink) of the submodule (or even just the nested repo if you don't want to register it as a submodule) it is using (as a special entry in its index).

And the submodule must remain the forked repo it originally was in order to be able to make PR (Pull Requests).