Version Control

11.13 Github

3 Parts of Version Control

  1. Working Directory: This is the folder where you store your files (e.g., C:\Home\hw1)
  2. Staging Area: Every time you make changes to your files, you need to stage the files. This tells git that these files are ready
  3. Repository: Every working directory that uses git for version control will have a .git folder, which records info about each version of the working directory.

Basic git commands:

git --version
  • Check version of git
git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email "johndoe@example.com"
  • Configure git to recognize you
git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email
  • Confirm that user name/e-mail are configured
git init
touch readme.md
git add readme.md
git commit -m "added readme file"
  • Initialize new repository
    • If you are at the file path C:\Home\hw1, git init will initialize the repository in the hw1 folder
    • An invisible .git folder will be created in the hw1 folder to track files.

    • If you are at the file path C:\Home and have not created the hw1 folder, then you can type git init hw1, which will create the hw1 folder and initialize the repo.

    • The code above did the following:
      1. git init: initialize repository
      2. touch readme.md: added a blank readme Markdown file
      3. git add readme.md: staged readme.md (this tells git that you are ready to commit this file to the repo)
      4. git commit -m "added readme file": committed changed to the repo (-m allows us to add a message)
git diff
  • Check differences between in the staging area and working directory.
  • Output: difference between each file that has changed since you last staged files (git add)
  • If you have staged all files, this command will output nothing, since nothing is different between your working directory and staging area.
git diff --staged
  • Check the differences between staging area and repository.
git log
  • See list of commits.
git reset file1.md
  • Suppose file1.md was staged, but I want to remove it from the staging area.
    • Now, file1.md will be untracked.
git remote add origin https://github.com/<username>/<repo-name>.git
git push -u origin master
  • Create a new repository in Github. Link your local working directory with the Github repo with these commands.
    • git remote add: sends commits to the location origin
    • We associated origin as a shortcut for the Github repo https://github.com/<username>/<repo-name>.git.
    • git push -u origin master
      • Send master branch to remote repo called origin
      • Option -u allows us to use git push as a shortcut for git push origin master in the future

  • Best Practices Using Github in RStudio

  • Tutorial on Git for Behavioral Sciences

  • Github and R