Using GitHub¶

Understanding Git¶

Git is a version control system that enables a proactive programmer to incrementally document and save their work on a project. In addition to installing Git on your computer you need to setup an account on GitHub! Before you do so, it is worth taking some time to read a tutorial on Automated Version Control. After you understand what version control is and why you should use it, you are ready to install Git on your computer and create and configure a GitHub account! To get started, please read Installing Git and follow the instructions for your computer's operating system. If you want to learn more about Git commands that you can use, make sure to read the Git Cheatsheet from GitHub.

The projects on this site expect you to use GitHub to receive starting source code and, if you are an Allegheny College student, submit your projects for assessment. As such, it is important for you to be able to securely communicate with the GitHub servers! In the remainder of these steps you will create an account on GitHub and ensure that you can securely communicate with the GitHub servers.

• If you do not already have a GitHub account, then please go to the GitHub web site and create one, making sure that, if you are a student at Allegheny College, you use your allegheny.edu email address so that you can join GitHub as a student at an accredited educational institution. You are also encouraged to sign up for GitHub's "Student Developer Pack" at Student Developer Pack, qualifying you to receive free software development tools. Additionally, please add a description of yourself and an appropriate professional photograph to your GitHub profile. Unless your username is taken, you should also pick your GitHub username to be the same as Allegheny's Google-based email account. If you are not enrolled at Allegheny College, then you can create a GitHub account with any name you prefer.

• If you have never done so before, you must use the ssh-keygen program to create secure-shell keys that you can use to support your communication with GitHub. This task requires you to type commands in a program that is known as a terminal. Your terminal will display as a box into which you can type commands. If you have already installed your terminal and it runs commands correctly, then you may need to further install ssh-keygen if it is not already installed on your computer.

• After starting the terminal, you will need to type the ssh-keygen command in it. Follow the prompts to create your keys and save them in the default directory. That is, you should press Enter after you are prompted to "Enter file in which to save the key ... :" and then type your selected passphrase whenever you are prompted to do so. Please note that a "passphrase" is like a password that you will type when you need to prove your identify to GitHub. What files does ssh-keygen produce? Where does this program store these files by default? Before moving on to the next step, take time to read the About SSH documentation provided by GitHub.

• Once you have created your SSH keys, you need to upload them to GitHub. To accomplish this task you should read the article called Adding an SSH Key to Your GitHub Account. Depending on your operating system and the programs currently installed on your laptop, it is possible that the steps that you need to follow may be slightly different than those listed on this site!

• To upload your SSH key, you must log into GitHub and look in the right corner for an account avatar with a down arrow. Click on this link and then select the "Settings" option. Now, scroll down until you find the "SSH and GPG keys" label on the left, click to create a "New SSH key", and then upload your SSH key to GitHub. Depending on your operating system, you can copy your SSH key to the clipboard by going to the terminal and typing a command like cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and then highlighting its output. Alternatively, you can load your SSH key into VS Code and copy its contents to the clipboard. When you are completing this step in your terminal, please make sure that you only highlight the letters and numbers in your key! If you highlight any extra symbols or spaces then this step may not work correctly. To complete this step, paste the key's contents into the GitHub text field in your web browser.

• Now that your SSH keys are uploaded to GitHub you should try to clone a GitHub repository to your computer and confirm that the keys are working as expected. You might want to clone the GitHub repository that hosts the source code for this web site. Or, you can clone another repository on GitHub that seems interesting to you! If you want to clone the repository that contains the source code for this web site, go to github/www.proactiveprogrammers.com and click the green button with the "Clone" label. After following the instructions you should run a command like git clone git@github.com:ProactiveProgrammers/www.proactiveprogrammers.com.git in your terminal window. If everything worked correctly then you should see the source code for this site on your computer! It is also worth pointing out that, if you cloned this site's GitHub repository, then you cloned a public repository and, once you start to clone private GitHub repositories, you will again need to confirm that your SSH keys are supporting secure communication correctly.

It is a good idea to further customize your configuration of Git! Although you might not need to apply all of the commands in the following tutorials, make sure to read them and carefully take those steps that are necessary for your computer and operating system.

• Setting up Git
• Your First Time with Git and GitHub
• First-Time Git Setup