Explore GitHub

[drelliche]

You are already on the website github.com and have an account (if you don't, please create one by clicking the "sign up" button in the upper right corner of your screen!). But why are we here?

In this challenge, you will explore two of GitHub's most powerful tools: version control and open source.

Version Control

What is version control and why is it so important?

• Read the article Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about version control? by Jenny Bryan. While there may be some sections that don’t apply to you directly (for example if you don’t use R), the overall message is extremely important.
• Think about some of the bad file name you have come across (or perhaps used yourself). These might be files like probably_important3.doc, final submission actually final.pdf, Untitled3523.jpg, etc. Have you ever lost a file or accidentally used the wrong version?

GitHub's Structure

Everything in GitHub is organized into repositories or "repos." From the GitHub documentation:

A repository contains all of your project's files and each file's revision history. You can discuss and manage your project's work within the repository.

This discussion is happening inside of a repository, the DART_Community_of_Practice.

Version Control in GitHub

GitHub makes version control easier because you can see exactly what you or someone else changed in a file. For example take a look at the record of the changes that have been made to the file containing this Data Challenge.

As you explore GitHub, you can dig into what has been changed as well as who changed and exactly when it was changed. If you look closely enough, you can even find how this repository was created from a prototype repository.

Open Source Projects

A project is open source if all of the code and files used to make it are publicly available and are free from most intellectual property restrictions. In other words, you can change and reuse open source code in your own project without getting special permission. There are a great many open source projects on GitHub, some maintained by large groups of collaborators.

• Use GitHub’s search capabilities - you can search by topic, author, or project name if you happen to know it - to find a repository that is interesting to you.
• Read its README file to learn more about it and explore the files it contains.
• Find out as much as you can about the project. Some questions to ask include:
  • Does it have a license stating that it is open source? What restrictions does it have on its use?
  • Does it have code you have used before, or are interested in using in the future?
  • Does it have many maintainers, or just a couple (or one)?
  • When was it last updated? Are people actively working on it?

Share What You Find

Did you find an excellent repository? Please share it below by repsonding to this post.

[pm0kjp]

One of the great finds the DART team made early on was the LiaScript product, and we make ample use of their repositories... they have one just for their documentation, another for their codebase. We learn a lot about how LiaScript works and if things go wrong we can look at recent changes to see if anything has changed that might be breaking our modules.