👋 The Basics of GitHub

🤓 Course overview and learning outcomes

The goal of this course is to give you a brief introduction to GitHub. We’ll also provide you with materials for further learning and a few ideas to get you started on our platform.

Git and GitHub

Git is a distributed Version Control System (VCS) that helps track changes as you work on new software development projects. Git tracks the changes you make so you always have a record of what you’ve worked on and you can easily revert back to an older version of your code if need be. It also makes working with others easier—groups of people can work together on the same project and merge their changes into one final source!

GitHub is a collaboration platform. From software to legal documents, you can count on GitHub to help you do your best work with the collaboration and security tools your team needs. With GitHub, you can keep projects completely private, invite the world to collaborate, and streamline every step of your project.

GitHub is also a powerful version control tool. GitHub uses Git, the most popular open source version control software, to track every contribution and contributor to your project—so you know exactly where every line of code came from.

GitHub helps people do much more. GitHub is used to build some of the most advanced technologies in the world. Whether you're visualizing data or building a new game, there's a whole community and set of tools on GitHub that can get you to the next step. This course starts with the basics, but we'll dig into the rest later.

💻 GitHub features

Repositories

A repository is where your project work happens. It contains all of your project’s files and revision history. You can work within a repository alone or invite others to collaborate with you on those files. As you work more on GitHub you will have many repositories. Use your GitHub dashboard to easily navigate to them. You must be logged in though!

Repositories also contain README’s. You can add a README file to your repository to tell other people why your project is useful, what they can do with your project, and how they can use it. We are using this README to communicate how to learn Git and GitHub with you. 😄

To learn more about repositories read "Creating, Cloning, and Archiving Repositories and "About README's".

Pull requests

Pull requests let you tell others about changes you've pushed to a branch in a repository on GitHub. Once a pull request is opened, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators and add more changes if need be.

Adding someone as a reviewer on your pull request is a signal to them that you want help or would like them to review the content.

To learn more about pull request, read "About Pull Requests".

Issues

Use issues to track enhancements, tasks, or bugs for your work on GitHub. Issues are a great way to keep track of all the tasks you want to work on for your project and let others know what you plan to work on. For larger projects, you can keep track of many issues on a project board. GitHub Projects help you organize and prioritize your work and you can read more about them in this "About Project boards document.

Pull requests and issues can also be linked together! You can link a pull request to an issue to show that a fix is in progress and to automatically close the issue when someone merges the pull request.

To learn more about issues and linking them to your pull requests, read "About Issues".

Your user profile

Your profile page tells people the story of your work through the repositories you're interested in, the contributions you've made, and the conversations you've had. You can also give the world a unique view into who you are with your profile README. You can use your profile to let future employers know all about you!

To learn more about your user profile and adding and updating your profile README, read "Managing Your Profile README".

Using markdown on GitHub

You might have noticed already, but you can minimally style your issues, pull requests, and files (as long as they are .md format!). Using Markdown in your issues, pull requests, and files helps organize your information and make it easier for others to read. You can also drop in gifs and images to convey your point!

To learn more about using GitHub’s flavor of markdown, read "Basic Writing and Formatting Syntax".

Engaging with the GitHub community

The GitHub community is vast. There are many types of people who use GitHub in their day to day—students like you, professional developers, hobbyists working on open source projects, and explorers who are just jumping into the world of software development on their own. There are many ways you can interact with the larger GitHub community, but here are three places where you can start.

Starring repositories

If you find a repository interesting or you want to keep track of it, star it! When you star a repository it’s also used as a signal to surface better recommendations on github.com/explore. If you’d like to get back to your starred repositories you can do so via your user profile.

To learn more about starring repositories, read "Saving Repositories with Stars".

Following users

You can follow people on GitHub to receive notifications about their activity and discover projects in their communities. When you follow a user, their public GitHub activity will show up on your dashboard so you can see all the cool things they are working on.

To learn more about following users, read "Following People".

Browsing GitHub Explore

GitHub Explore is a great place to do just that … explore 😄 You can find new projects, events, and developers to interact with.

You can check out the GitHub Explore website at github.com/explore. The more you intereact with GitHub the more tailored your Explore view will be.

Understanding the GitHub flow

The GitHub flow is a lightweight workflow that allows you to experiment with new ideas safely, without fear of compromising a project.

Branching

You can use branches on GitHub to isolate work that you do not want merged into your final project. Branches allow you to develop features, fix bugs, or safely experiment with new ideas in a contained area of your repository. You always create a branch from an existing branch. Typically, you might create a new branch from the default branch of your repository—main.

Once your new changes have been reviewed by a teammate, or you are satisfied with them, you can merge your changes into the default branch of your repository.

To learn more about branching, read "About Branches".

Cloning and forking

When you create a repository it exists remotely outside of your local machine. You can clone a repository to create a local copy on your computer and then use Git to sync the two.

You can clone a repository from GitHub to your local computer to make it easier to fix issues, add or remove files, and push larger commits. You can also use an IDE or editing tool of your choice as opposed to the GitHub UI. When you clone a repository, you copy the repository from GitHub to your local machine. Cloning a repository pulls down a full copy of all the repository data that GitHub has at that point in time, including all versions of every file and folder for the project. To learn more about cloning, read "Cloning a Repository".

A fork is another way to copy a repository, but is most commonly used when contributing to someone else’s project. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project and is very popular when contributing to open source software projects.

To learn more about forking, read "For a Repo".

📝 Optional next steps

• Open a pull request and let your teacher know that you’ve finished this course.
• Create a new markdown file in this repository. Let them know what you learned and what you are still confused about! Experiment with different styles!
• Create your profile README. Let the world know a little bit more about you! What are you interested in learning? What are you working on? What's your favorite hobby? Learn more about creating your profile README in the document, "Managing Your Profile README".
• Go to your user dashboard and create a new repository. Experiment with the features within that repository to familiarize yourself with them.
• Let us know what you liked or didn’t like about the content of this course. What would you like to see more of? What would be interesting or helpful to your learning journey?

📚 Resources

• A short video explaining what GitHub is
• Git and GitHub learning resources
• Understanding the GitHub flow
• How to use GitHub branches
• Interactive Git training materials
• GitHub's Learning Lab
• Education community forum
• GitHub community forum