github-practice

GitHub practice for CSC 362

Start (from the very beginning)

Begin by cloning this repository to your local computer. This code in this repository is located in the cloud at the moment. We want to make a local copy of the repository so that you can practice making edits to this local version, committing the edits to be shared, and then submitting a pull request to merge those edits and actually share them on GitHub.

To do this, first open VS Code to the home page. You can do this through VS Code's interface or through VS Code's command line -- I'll explain the command line. In the upper right corner of VS Code, click the terminal button:

In the terminal at the bottom of VS Code, type ls. This will show you all of the directories and files in your current working directory. Which directory is that? Type pwd to see where you are in the computer.

Let's download the repository code to this location on your computer. Back in the GitHub window, click the green "Code" button to access the drop down. Copy that https:// link.

Back in the VS Code terminal, type: git clone and paste the https link that you just copied then hit enter. Example:

# Any line that starts with % is the command you enter (after the %)
% git clone https://github.com/kawilliams/github-practice.git
Cloning into 'github-practice'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 4, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (4/4), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (4/4), done.

Type cd github-practice to move into this new directory. If you type ls now, you should see the contents of the directory.

Your Usual Start (once you're working in a repository)

Now that you have a local version of the code, we'll go through your typical workflow of making changes to your "workspace" and then submitting them to the public workspace. When you're working in a repository with a team (1 or more other people), you'll usually follow these steps:

1. Pull any changes from the main branch, so that your local copy is up to date
2. Create a new branch with the idea that you're working on
3. Edit the code in your branch
4. Commit the changes (meaning, save them in meaningful chunks)
5. Once you've completed the task or need additional eyes on the changes, you push the changes to the remote repository and create a pull request
6. The pull request is reviewed by someone on the team
7. If all looks good, the teammate merges the pull request
8. You can delete your branch once the changes are merged

1. Pull any changes

Start by checking what branch you have checked out to your local machine:

% git branch
* main

If any other branches exist, you'll see them displayed. Since we're on main, let's pull the latest changes from main to make sure our code is up to date:

git pull

2. Create a new branch

Let's make a new branch that is based on main. We want to make sure we are currently on main (that was step 1 with git branch). Since we are, any new branch we make will be based on the branch we are on -- which is what we want. We're going to add a file with your information in it, so call your branch something useful: add-<name>-info (where <name> is replaced with your first and last name:

git checkout -b add-katy-williams-info

The checkout command tells GitHub to switch to a different branch. The -b flag tells GitHub that we are switching to a new branch, and we provide the name of that new branch.

Now if you call git branch, you should see your new branch and a star (*) indicating we are on that branch.

% git branch
* add-katy-williams-info
  main

3. Edit the code in your branch.

In VS Code, make a new text file and call it <name>.txt, where you replace <name> with your first and last name. Add the following content to your file and personlize it to make it yours:

My name is ____. I am a sophomore/junior/senior at Davidson College. I'm majoring in ____.

My favorite Dad joke or knock-knock joke is:
__________

Save your work.

4. Commit your changes.

To publish the changes you made, we need to use the commit command. There are two steps to this part: add the changed files and then commit the change. Think of commit as a benchmark for some work -- you completed an activity that takes a meaningful step forward. You may have several commits that make up a pull request, so commits don't need to solve the whole problem, just a meaningful step.

To add the changed files, first do:

git add .

The add command adds any changes to a new commit. If you don't specify which files and simply use the ., Git will add all of the changes within your current directory. If you want to specify each individual file, you can by doing git add katy-williams.txt if I wanted to only add my katy-williams.txt file to the commit.

Once you've added all of your files that contribute to the commit, you should use commit and write a useful (but short) message describing what this commit does:

git commit -m "Adds my joke file"

All together, your output should look like this:

git add %                                                                                                                   
 % git add .
 % git commit -m "Adding katy-williams.txt"
[add-katy-williams-info 758ea7c] Adding katy-williams.txt
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 katy-williams.txt

5. Push your changes to the remote repo to create a pull request

Now that you have a commit, we need to move these changes to the remote repository (repo). To do this we'll use the git push command.

The first time you call git push on a new branch, you'll see this message pop up:

% git push
fatal: The current branch add-katy-williams-info has no upstream branch.
To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use

    git push --set-upstream origin add-katy-williams-info

To have this happen automatically for branches without a tracking
upstream, see 'push.autoSetupRemote' in 'git help config'.

THIS IS OK! GitHub is telling you that there isn't yet a remote version of your branch. We need to set up this remote branch so that the remote repo knows about it. To do this, copy and paste the prescribed command that appeared in the warning:

git push --set-upstream origin add-katy-williams-info

You'll see this output:

 % git push --set-upstream origin add-katy-williams-info
Enumerating objects: 4, done.
Counting objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 494 bytes | 494.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
remote: 
remote: Create a pull request for 'add-katy-williams-info' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/kawilliams/github-practice/pull/new/add-katy-williams-info
remote: 
To https://github.com/kawilliams/github-practice.git
 * [new branch]      add-katy-williams-info -> add-katy-williams-info
branch 'add-katy-williams-info' set up to track 'origin/add-katy-williams-info'.

Copy and paste the pull request link to see your pull request on github.com.

6. Review the pull request.

On GitHub.com, you'll see a prompt to open the pull request.

You should click "Submit Pull Request" and then review all of the changes. If everything looks good, click "Merge Pull Request".

7. Delete your branch.

Click on "Delete branch" to delete the remote branch. Your local branch will still exist! Go back to VS Code to see your branch.

In VS Code, switch back to main. You'll see an outdated version of main that doesn't include your new .txt file. Do git pull to pull the updated changes to your local version of the repository.