GETTING_STARTED.md

Getting Started

Setting Up Your System

1. Install Git or your favorite Git client.
2. (Optional) Setup an SSH Key for GitHub.
3. Create a parent projects directory on your system.

Forking freeCodeCamp Alumni Network

1. Go to the freeCodeCamp Alumni Network (FFCAN) repository: https://github.com/FCC-Alumni/alumni-network
2. Click the "Fork" Button in the upper right hand corner of the interface (More Details Here)
3. After the repository has been forked, you will be taken to your copy of the FCCAN repo at yourUsername/alumni-network

Cloning Your Fork

1. Open a Terminal / Command Line / Bash Shell in your projects directory (i.e.: /yourprojectdirectory/)
2. Clone your fork of FCCAN

$ git clone https://github.com/<yourUsername>/alumni-network.git

(make sure to replace <yourUsername> with your GitHub Username)

This will download the entire FCCAN repo to your project's directory.

Setup Your Upstream

1. Change directory to the new FCCAN directory (cd alumni-network)
2. Add a remote to the official FCCAN repo:

$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/FCC-Alumni/alumni-network.git

Congratulations, you now have a local copy of the FCCAN repo!

Maintaining Your Fork

Now that you have a copy of your fork, there is work you will need to do to keep it current.

Rebasing from Upstream

Do this prior to every time you create a branch for a PR:

1. Make sure you are on the master branch

$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

If your aren't on master, resolve outstanding files / commits and checkout the master branch

$ git checkout master

2. Do a pull with rebase against upstream

$ git pull --rebase upstream master

This will pull down all of the changes to the official master branch, without making an additional commit in your local repo.

3. (Optional) Force push your updated master branch to your GitHub fork

$ git push origin master --force

This will overwrite the master branch of your fork.

Create A Branch

Before you start working, you will need to create a separate branch specific to the issue / feature you're working on. You will push your work to this branch.

Naming Your Branch

Name the branch something like fix/xxx or feature/xxx where xxx is a short description of the changes or feature you are attempting to add. For example fix/email-login would be a branch where you fix something specific to email login.

Adding Your Branch

To create a branch on your local machine (and switch to this branch):

$ git checkout -b [name_of_your_new_branch]

For example:

$ git checkout -b fix/minor-typo

and to push to GitHub:

$ git push origin fix/minor-type

If you need more help with branching, take a look at this.