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Playing with GitHub

A few weeks ago, you made a GitHub account and published your personal webpage. Today, we will practice collaborating on GitHub. Today's goals are:

  • Explain the advantages of collaborating with git and GitHub
  • Practice creating pull requests two ways
  • Identify some common git/GitHub pitfalls to avoid

Today's agenda is:

Time Activity
10:00-10:10 Welcome, and send us your
10:10-10:20 REVIEW: Practice authenticating and cloning a GitHub repository in a Cyverse analysis.
10:20-10:30 Collaborating on GitHub: Forks, branches, checkouts, and pull requests.
10:30-10:50 Using forks and pull requests, collaborate on the Home Towns tabular data file.
10:50-11:00 DEMO: reviewing and merging pull requests
11:00-11:10 BREAK
11:10-11:30 Using branches and pull requests, edit the HYR-SENSE website to add a link to your portfolio.
11:30-11:40 Pull and check out - look at each other's work
11:40-12:00 Review other students' Pull Requests on GitHub.

Activity 1: Home Towns

In this activity, you will practice:

  1. Forking a repository on GitHub
  2. Cloning your fork to Cyverse
  3. Modifying a tabular data file (CSV) with information about a significant place
  4. Adding, committing, and pushing your data back to GitHub
  5. Creating a Pull Request back to the main repository

You can find full instructions for this activity in the ESIIL Data Short Course forking activity

Activity 2: Contribute to the HYR-SENSE website

In this activity, you will practice:

  1. Cloning the HYR-SENSE repository to Cyverse
  2. Creating a new branch as a collaborator
  3. Adding your webpage link to the HYR-SENSE website
  4. Adding, committing, and pushing your changes back to GitHub
  5. Creating a Pull Request to the main branch

You can find full instructions for this activity in the ESIIL Data Short Course branch activity

Some common git/GitHub problems you may encounter

During today's activities, we will also touch on the following common git/GitHub snafus, and how to fix them:

  • Triple check everything: the add-commit-push workflow
    • Add before you commit
    • Writing descriptive commit messages
    • Syncing with your team on GitHub
  • Large files: ignore data files and clear outputs
  • How do you know it worked? Demystifying git status
  • Identifying and some basic approaches to merge conflicts
Last update: 2024-06-14