Version Control

This is a straightfoward process. Navigate to Github and complete the sign up process on the home page. You should use whatever email address is convenient, and you can chose whatever username is available, but think for a moment. If you are successful in this course at improving your computing skills the Github platform is something you may want to use professionally in the future; pick a username that won't embarass you later.

You should see a blank page with a random geometric avatar and no activity or repositories.

The hello world guide will walk you through creating a repository. Even if you delete after creation go through these steps to learn what a repository is.

There is short github guide on the notion of a fork.

When you fork the course repository you will enable cloning (to be covered later) your own local version on your home computer or laptop. Your fork will also give you access to your own copies of all files that you can edit or add to without affecting my copies. Your fork (and subsequently your clone) will give you a way to add changes back to my copies (if I accept your pull request) and easily incorporate new changes that I make into your version. The main course repository is here: https://github.com/brittAnderson/Intro2Computing4Psychology Note that there is a readme file on the landing page. This is created from the readme.org file that you can see in the list of code files right above. Open this up by clicking on it and make a local change to your version of the readme.org file. Maybe add a line that says this is your fork; something minor; and then commit that change. You should see the readme region change to reflect your change (you may have to refresh your browser). You will at this point have progressed through some of the core features of version control, but to practice some more …

You can find that here: https://github.com/brittAnderson/psych363practice

1. Create a github account.
2. Fork the two course related repositories.
   1. Intro2Computing4Psychology
   2. psych363Practice
3. Submit a screen short of your github account with appropriate repositories created to the Dropbox on Learn.

Note bene: Some things about authenticating for github have changed. You now need a personal access token instead of just a password to make certain things work. The video below provides you some pointers for the creation of a personal access token.

personalAccessTokenGithub.mp4 from Britt Anderson on Vimeo.

Where to find the information to generate a personal access token for github.

In an earlier topic we learned some of the basics of learning git and using it with github. Here we will learn what push, pull, and remotes are all about.

1. Open a terminal
2. Move (cd or dir) into your Desktop
3. type git init myrepo
4. You should see message from the terminal prompt that it has been created.
5. Feel free to delete (e.g. rm -rf ./myrepo)

On your laptop (Ubuntu):

1. Move to a directory where you want to keep things organized. I use ~/gitRepos/. To make that directory you could do mkdir ~/gitRepos/ and then cd to it. Verify you are there with pwd. All this is happening in the terminal.
2. Open a web browser and find your fork of Psych363. On that page there should be a button to clone it that will allow you to copy the command. It may be hidden. Look for a blue "code" button. Hitting that may open the dialogue that shows you the clone command.
3. Go back to your terminal and paste it (usually Ctrl-Shift v). Hit <enter>.
4. You should see some activity that things are being copied.
5. ls to see you have a new directory in your gitRepos directory.
6. cd into this new directory and look around. Compare it to what you see when you look at your fork on github.

For the assessment we will create more remotes and work on generating a pull request.

1. Generate a pull request for the psych363Practice repository on Github.
2. Generate an issue for the psych363Practice repository.

This course makes use of github for practicing how to use the version control program git. An important part of collaborating on code (or other material hosted on github, which might include text files) is to be able to give back or to alert the owner to a problem. This requires that you can both generate a pull request and that you can open an issue.

1. Previously you should have forked the psych363Practice repository.
2. Next you will need to clone your fork to your laptop.
3. Check that you have your fork as a remote.
4. Add my original version of the repository as a second remote.
5. To make sure you have the latest code, including all the other pulls generated by other students in the course you will want to:
   1. Pull from my original repo.
   2. Accept and merge the changes if necessary.
   3. Push these new changes to your fork on github.
   4. Verify the new changes made it there by looking at your fork in your browser. You may have to refresh your browser to see the changes.
   5. Now, in the gitnames subdirectory add a file with <yourfirstname>.txt. Put some simple sentence in it.
   6. Add this file.
   7. Commit this change.
   8. Push to your fork.
   9. In your web browser initiate a pull request.
6. When I receive your pull request I will accept it and give you half credit for this assignment (if you are a UWloo student).
7. Next, open an issue. Just give it a simple title and make a simple statement. Our goal is to practice the process. Note the number of your issue and upload this number to the dropbox with your github name so I can match issues and pull requests to students.

Important Note: To help each other learn how to use git, github, and the material of this course, whether or not you are a UWaterloo student, use the issue function in the Intro2Computing4Psychology repository to report your problems and confusions. That issue record will persist for future visitors to the repo who have the same question see how we dealt with it.