10 Minutes
GitHub is a web-based version control repository. It also serves as an Internet hosting service. GitHub provides the functionality of Git (such as distributed version control and source code management). It also offers:
- bug tracking
- task management
- wikis
- gists
- feature requests
- and more.
GitHub is the world's largest repository for source code. GitHub is used in tandem with Git to make changes, share changes, deal with conflicts and enable project participants to synchronize their work.
Through participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand why GitHub is used to support open source projects
- Use some basic features of GitHub to prepare for contributing to a project, including creating a copy of the project (i.e. a fork)
A later session will discuss features and capabilities of GitHub and will discuss additional steps in the open source process such as issuing a pull request, etc.
If you ALREADY have a GitHub account, log into your regular account.
If you DO NOT have a GitHub account, you will need to make one:
-
Open your browser and navigate to the Join GitHub Account Creation page.
-
Initiate an account sign-up: Fill out the form on the home page:
- Enter a username in the Username field (NOTE: you will need a unique username)
- Enter your email address in the Email address field
- Enter a password in the Password field
- Select your email preference via the Email preference checkbox
- If necessary, verify your account via the Verify your account widget.
-
Click the "Create Account" button
If you are doing this in an instructor-led workshop, your instructor may provide a URL to a copy that they have made of our Codeless Project.
If you are doing this on your own (i.e. self-study), feel free to use our standard Codeless Project.
Fork a copy of the Codeless Project into your GitHub acccount:
- Open the webpage for the Codeless Project (either ours OR the version provided by your workshop instructor)
- In the upper right hand corner, you'll see a Fork button:
- Click the Fork button to to create a fork under your account
NOTE: The fork refers back to the original repository - if you look under your repository name, you'll see it should look something like this: "forked from chalmerlowe/intro_to_sprinting_codeless_project:" much like this example from sigsevneo's repository.
If you (and your partner, if you're working in pairs) are done, then you can put your green sticky up! This is how we know you're done. Feel free to read the following sections to learn more about some of steps you just completed.
Project files on GitHub are often called repositories, or a repo/repos for short. For every project you contribute to, you will interact with several different GitHub repos:
- One repo will be the original project repository
- The other repo will be your personal copy of the original repo. When you want to work on a project, GitHub will enable you to fork the original project so that you can have a copy of the project under your account. In this case, Johnny Appleseed is forking a copy of the codeless project.
There are several nuances to understand about this:
- Your GitHub copy is exactly that: your copy
- You can do whatever you want to your copy >> you can change it to suit your needs (within the limits of copyright/the license on the project)
- You do NOT have to explicitly share any of your changes back to the original author
- GitHub will maintain a link, behind the scenes, for you, so that you can share your changes (we'll talk about that later)
- Unless they go looking, no one at the original repo will generally even know/notice about the specific details of your changes until you tell them about it. (Caveat: finding your changes is not hard, but there is generally no reason for folks to go looking.)
- GitHub - Account Setup and Configuration
- GitHub Bootcamp
- GitHub Help
- Are Git forks actually Git clones?
| Previous | Up | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Installing the Software You'll Need | Environment Set-up | Setting up Git |