#Place to practice the collaborative coding workflow

Note: this is a workflow where one person (me, Emily) is the owner of a repository.

Workflow is slightly different if multiple people are collaborators on a project (i.e. have write permissions)

If you're working inside the USGS network, you'll need to complete an additional step to work inside the firewall. Directions are here. Change this before proceding.

To change a document here, do the following:

• Click on 'fork' in the upper right habd of this page, to create YOUR personal branch of this repository. Create it under your username, as prompted.
• This should create a copy of this repository on your github page - under yourusername/practice (will no longer say ehbaker/practice at top of page).
• Nice work! You have a personal copy of this repository... online. But we want to get it onto your personal machine.
• To make a local copy, you will clone the repository.
• Open Git Bash on your machine (if you don't have it yet, download).
• Use cd (change directory) and tab-completion in this command line interface to move to the folder where you want to keep your local copy of this GUI.
  • If you want to put it on your desktop, navigate to your desktop (a folder called mbGUI will be created during clone).
  • The text in yellow gives your location; also typing pwd in the prompt will print your current location.
  • .. means 'go up a directory'; from c/Users/yourusername, type cd Desktop to go to the desktop.
• Back on your github page (yourusername/practice), click the green 'Clone or Download' button. Copy the address of the git repository shown there, something like https://github.com/yourusername/practice.git
• Clone the directory with Git Bash by entering git clone https://github.com/yourusername/practice.git (with copied git address)
• A new folder will appear titled practice - this has all the files in this repository.

Yay! Now you can use and edit the files on your local machine!! Woop!!

To push changes back up to github:

• Make changes. Since these are text files, notepad, notepad ++, Subline text would all work to edit. Save and close file.
• Commit the changes you've made to the git tracking on your local machine: git commit filenameOfFileYouChanged -m " short message about the changes you've made"
  • The -m "message" flag is important; Git will not accept your commit without it. If you forget to enter, the default text editor that ships with Git Bash is Vims... an old-school text editor which is hard to escape. If you end up here, quit by hitting Esc, then :, then q! . Phew! In the future, don't forget the -m "msg".
• Push the changes you've made up to YOUR version of this project ONLINE: git push origin master
  • If you go to https://github.com/yourusername/practice.git, you'll see the new changes you've made (may need to refresh page).

On Github, request that the repository owner (me, Emily) incorporate your changes into the master document

• Go to your github page, and hit the "New Pull Request" button (mid/upper left).
• Hit green "Create Pull Request" button on next page (you can see your proposed changes highlighted below).
• You will now see a message that "This branch has no conflicts with the base branch. Only those with write access to this repository can merge pull requests.". The repository owner (me) has recieved a notification that you're requesting a change, and can now review and either accept or reject.

Feel free to practice this process here, before going on to work with more difficult projects!

##For more detailed tutorials, check out Software Carpentry's Git Tutorial.