Andrew Severin

Andrew Severin

Andrew manages the Genome Informatics Facility at Iowa State University. His academic background is in biochemistry with a Ph.D. in Biophysics/NMR spectroscopy. He is an interdisciplinary scientist working at the interface of Genetics and Bioinformatics, translating Big Data into informative data for interesting biological questions. He is passionate about evolution and the science behind the genome.

DataScience Workbook / 09: Project Management / 3. Resource Management / 3.3. Storage & Version Control / 3.3.2. Online hosting platforms for GIT repositories / GitHub - getting started (class exercise)

Git GUIs

Graphical user interfaces for Git

There are several GUI tools for working with Git.

These tools may be very helpful for doing things that you don’t do every day (when it’s difficult to remember the command).

They also provide nice ways to visualize your repository tree and diff commits, etc. I like SourceTree.

  • The website for our course is rendered in HTML by GitHub Pages, too. We do this by simply enabling GitHub Pages in the settings of our repository. Then we chose a theme for our pages (i.e., the Minimal theme). These themes run Jekyll and there are some nice Jekyll pages out there.

  • Create a new repository on GitHub

  • Write a description of the repository in the README.md Markdown file

  • Create a new text or Markdown file that says “Hello world” or anything else you’d like to say

  • Add this file to your repository and push all the changes to the remote

Let’s take some time to make sure everyone can create a repository. If you have been successful, please help your classmates.

If your problem is unique, you can always submit a question on Stack Overflow

Git Collaboration

Now that we all have repositories on GitHub, let’s collaborate!

  • Get into groups of 2-3.

  • Give your collaborators access (push rights) to your repository by inviting them on the GitHub page for your repository.

  • Clone your collaborator’s repository.

  • Add and edit files in your collaborator’s repository.

  • Commit and push those changes to the remote.

Working with Others

Once you start working with other people on the same repository, you will encounter some scenarios that we haven’t yet covered.

  • What happens when two people commit changes to the repository at the same time? ???

  • What happens when two people commit changes to the same part of the same file at the same time?!?

  • What if I really disagree with the changes someone made to the repository?

Git can be challenging

  • What do you find confusing?

  • What did you struggle with when creating a repository?

  • What do you think would be helpful to overcome these challenges?