Git & GitHub Overview

Data Science and Visualization Institute for Librarians

Heidi Tebbe (anideaofhappiness) | Bret Davidson (bretdavidson)

bretdavidson.github.io/dsvil-github

The Plan

Why use version control systems?
What is Git?
What is GitHub?
Evaluating software projects activity.
Using GitHub without the command line.
Non-code uses for Git & GitHub.
GitHub web interface activity.

Objectives

Familiarity with some basic git concepts.
Awareness of alternative uses of git and GitHub.
Familiarity with GitHub web interface.
Experience evaluating software projects on GitHub.
Experience submitting commits and pull requests.

Caveat

This is an introduction!

Caveat

Why use version control?

How to save documents!

annual.docx
annual_final.docx
annual_final_JC.docx
annual_final_JC_2.docx
annual_final_final.docx
annual_final_final_corrected.docx
FINAL_annual_final.docx

What does version control do?

Records the history of changes to a set of related files inside of a "repository".
Enables navigation of that change history.
Supports sharing of the repository among a group of collaborators.

What is Git?

Git is a distributed version control system.
Original author is Linus Torvalds, of Linux fame.
"I'm egotistical, and I name all my projects after myself."
git means "unpleasant person" in British slang.

Core Concepts

clone

obtain a copy of a repository

pull

update your local copy of repo to the latest version

branch

create a separate version of the files in the repo

commit

record a set of changes

merge

add your changes to 'master' branch

push

send your changes to the central or remote repo

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a Git repository hosting service.
Adds services on top of Git like issues, wikis, and social networking.

Critical Features of GitHub

Fork
Pull Request

fork

create a copy (clone) in order to make your own changes

use someone else's project as a starting point

propose changes to the original

pull request

mechanism for submitting your changes to original project

project owner "pulls" in your changes

Profile Page

Repository Page

Activity

Project Health
Project Support
Project Documentation

Activity

Discussion

What did you learn?
How well did your project perform?
What questions do you have?

GitHub Desktop

desktop.github.com

windows interface

create a new branch

view your branches

create, add, and clone repositories

clone a repository

commit

What else can I do with GitHub?

Referencing and Citing Content

Zenodo - Making Your Code Citable
Figshare - How to connect figshare with your GitHub account

Jupyter Notebooks

Project Jupyter

Jupyter Notebooks

interactive environments that can contain executable code, rich text, mathematics, plots
uses include: data cleaning and transformation, data visualization, machine learning, instruction, etc.
support over 40 programming languages, including Python and R
Jupyter Notebook Viewer : free web service that allows you to share static versions of publicly available hosted notebook files
render directly on GitHub (interactive features won't work)