96 What is version control and GitHub?
Written by Mariam Walaa and last updated on 7 October 2021.
96.1 Introduction
In this lesson, you will learn how to:
- Understand version control
- Understand GitHub and Git
Prerequisite skills include:
- Navigating and working with your local folder directory
Highlights:
- Git behaves for folders similar to how AutoSave behaves for Microsoft Word.
- You can use Git within RStudio or from the command line, like Git Bash.
96.2 Overview
You may use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel and turn on AutoSave to track your progress. Version control works similarly for your folder directory.
You may have a folder directory where you store files that may contain text, code, etcetera, and you want to track the changes you make to these files. Git helps you do this by tracking changes the make to your files in a few steps.
Just like turning on AutoSave in a Microsoft Word file, you need to tell Git that you want a file to be tracked. Using Git, this is a two-step process:
- First, you need to tell Git that you want to start tracking a file.
- Next, you need to tell Git that you want the progress made to the file to be captured at that specific point.
This is a two-step process rather than a single step in order to allow you to make as many changes as you want before you commit to the point that you would like to have the file captured at. To be more specific, you can repeat step 1 as many times as you want before you move on to step 2.
96.2.1 Visualizing Git
Let’s take a closer look at the different aspects of Git.
When using Git, the first thing you want to do is create a repository within a folder
directory on your local computer. This is done using the git init command. When you run
this command, Git won’t know which files you’d like to track, but it’ll at least know that
you want some files in the directory in which you’re running the command to be tracked.
Once you have a local repository as a result of running the previous command, the next
thing you’ll want to do is maintain this local repository. In other words, you’ll want to
tell Git about the state of your files as you make progress on them. You do this using
these 3 commands: git add, git commit, and git push. The last command, git push,
is typically needed when you’re working with team mates and you want to push your local
work to the remote repository.
The last command is git status. This is a command that you want to use as you work on
your project and make progress in your directory in order to tell you what you currently
have tracked and what you currently don’t have tracked. There are several components to
the output of this command that you’ll need to know how to interpret:
