Git and GitHub: The Basics

Jonathan Peake

Users, organizations, and teams

 

Users

• Your account

• Connected to your NOAA email

• Can add secondary email

Users, organizations, and teams

 

Organizations

• Shared account with large number of people

• Can be housed under Enterprise

• Collaboration and controlled access

Users, organizations, and teams

 

Teams

• Nested within organization

• Sub-groups for collaboration and access

• Can have teams within teams for more fine-scale structure

Repositories - the main unit

• Sets the folder and file structure

• Contained and permissioned

• Public, private, or internal (Enterprise)

• Commits and issues - Contributing through GitHub

Commit

• A specific “thing” that you want to save and keep a record for

• Snapshot of all the files in the entire project

• Commit messages provide info about the “thing” you’ve done

• Commits give a history of the project

Cloning, Forking, Importing, and Branching (oh my!)

Cloning

• Making a local copy from GitHub

• Allows local sync within and across devices

• Push local changes, fetch remote changes

Image credit: https://jaisriram.hashnode.dev/how-to-clone-a-github-repository-to-local-machine

Forking

• Adding to or modifying repository hosted on someone else’s account

• “Sees” changes from parent repo - allows syncing with parent

• Can be for personal purposes - doesn’t have to be pushed to original repo!

Image credit: https://www.earthdatascience.org/workshops/intro-version-control-git/pull-request/

Importing

• Use another repo as starting point for your own

• Copy not connected to original

• Usually meant for importing from a different version control system (e.g., GitLab)

  • Can be employed to use another GitHub repo as a “pseudo-template”

Branching

• Copies of repos housed within the repo structure

• Allow for working on repo without changing main branch

• Can help for more complex collaboration