GitHub for Beginners

What is GitHub? How do you use GitHub? Why should you have a GitHub? Are you new to the data world? If you stick around long enough you’ll hear about GitHub one way or another.

GitHub is a popular platform used by many developers to collaborate and control different versions of your project. It helps enhance efficiency when working on projects with multiple team members from anywhere in the world! It allows you to merge, edit, and add different changes to files on a project.

I’ll be going over simple jargon and reviewing the format of GitHub and how to work around the web-based platform to help ease your mind in learning all things code!

In order to use GitHub, you need to have Git installed.

What is Git? Git is the actual control system that manages the different versions of your project. Installing Git will allow you to initialize the system on a project to create and track changes being made. GitHub is the actual platform hosting service that manages your projects using Git.

Here’s a quick review of the process:

Install Git → Initialized Git on a project → a repository folder is created → any changes to the project is now saved inside the repository→ commit changes→ push to GitHub → repository updated on GitHub for team members to view.

In order to know the functions of GitHub here are some common words to know as I walk through the GitHub platform and desktop features. ( I recommend downloading GitHub to your desktop for quick access. It can be downloaded here: https://desktop.github.com/)

First, when you log into your GitHub account there are 4 tabs on the top bar. These are shortcuts to different pages.

• Pull requests — requests someone to review the changes made to the project to update the original file.
• Issues — This is GitHub’s version of tracking bugs on your projects. This tab can be used to share and discuss with your team. It’s a shortcut to all the repositories with issues.
• Marketplace — Is the app store for GitHub with all the different extensions you can download to improve your workflow.
• Explore — Is similar to a public feed of other people's projects shared based on trends, and interests to explore.

Then you have the classic notification bell, +, and profile drop-down that gives you shortcuts to navigate around the platform. The notification bell notifies you of your messages in your inbox, the plus dropdown allows you to quickly create/import a new repository, gist, organization, or project. Lastly, the profile dropdown has shortcuts to the main pages shown below.

When you click on a project you have the following tabs:

• Watch — different notification settings on a particular project. There is a drop-down making it accessible to change your alert settings for each individual repository.
• Star — All projects that are starred will be in “Your stars” which creates an organized list of specific projects that are important.
• Fork — copies the repository and allows you to make changes to it without it changing the original repository.

The number represents the number of people who have notified, starred, and forked the particular project.

Next, there are several different options to help organize and keep up with every change and update.

• Code — This will display the commits, the title, and how long ago it was pushed along with the actual project.
• Pull requests — the requests for this particular repository.
• Actions — helps automate, customize, and execute your software workflow allowing you to also create your own templates for your workflow.
• Projects — You can organize, plan, and sort your projects all in one place.
• Security — This allows you to set up a security policy, enable alerts, and have your code scanned to detect coding errors.
• Insights — Shows you a historical record of every update that was done to the repository including pulse, contributors, traffic, commits, code frequency, dependency graph, network, and forks.
• Settings — You can rename and update the different features that are desired.

Now that we walked through the remote platform how do I work on and get my local repositories to GitHub? The GitHub desktop has been a helpful tool to quickly access and push updates from my local repositories up to my GitHub. When you first open GitHub Desktop it looks like this:

• On the left side, you will be able to pick a repository to take action. Once a repository is selected you are able to see the changes that were done to the project.
• In the center, you are able to switch between different branches that you may be working on so that your changes are not updated to the original project but are still saved within a specific branch.
• On the right side, fetch origin — downloads the remote repository and updates the local repository to reflect the same content.
• Commit — time stamps the changes and updates made to the local repository.

You can title the commit and add a description to the changes made to keep track of the update.

Once changes are made and final you can push your local repository to GitHub to share your work with your teammates.

• Push — transfers the changes from the local branch of your computer to the remote repository on GitHub.

(With GitHub Desktop you can just push your repository with a click of a button!)

As you can see GitHub makes collaborating and organizing your projects efficient and easily accessible. It is highly recommended to use GitHub as many developers and companies use this platform for their own team. It can also become an easy way to share your projects and display your work to future employers!