Hack Your Learning: Session 1 - Part 1

Introduction

The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with git. With your team you will follow the steps outlined on this page.

What is .md?

Markdown is a syntax that allows you more functionality to format text. Popular social sites along with blogs will use markdown in various forms. Markdown is commonly used in git when creating documentation for your repository.

https://www.ultraedit.com/company/blog/community/what-is-markdown-why-use-it.html

Prerequisites

• A text editor
• A Github account
• git installed on your machine
• terminal or command prompt access

Exercise 1: Starting with Git

this portion of the workshop can be follow live during the prep session

1. Open either Terminal on Mac or Command Prompt on Windows

2. Navigate the to the folder where you would like to create your repository

3. To create a new repository type the following command

   git init

   The git init command will start a repository and allow you to track the changes of the files within that folder.

4. Once you have initialized the repository you can add a file to be tracked. Once you have created a file open it in your text editor.

5. Add some text to the ile. In our demonstration we will add hello world and then save the file.

6. In the terminal window check the status of the git repository using the following command

   git status

   When typing the command you should see a message similar to the below:

   $ git status
   On branch master
   
   No commits yet
   
   Untracked files:
   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
           myfile.txt
   
   nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

   This message says that there have been changes to files within the repository that are not currently tracked by git.

7. To track changes on the file you created use the following command:

   git add myfile.txt

   This will tell git to track the changes for that file.

8. To save the changes to the repository use the following command

   git commit -m "This is my first commit"

   This will commit the changes you made to the repository with the commit message of "This is my first commit". Commit messages are useful if you wanted to go back and see all of the commits made to a repository.

Exercise 2: Git Basics

1. Make a copy of the repository on a member of your team's Github account. Do this by forking the repository. Navigate to the Hack Your Learning repository then click the fork button https://github.com/Hack-Your-Learning/retreat1-ex1

   In order to allow the other members of your team to contribute to your repository you will need to add them as colloaborators. A guide for doing so is found here

2. Each member of your team should clone this repository on their own computer. Do this by navigating to the folder of your choice within the command line and then using the command

   git clone [your repository URL]

3. Once each member has cloned the repository, open the lorem_ipsum.md file located in the storyTime folder in your text editor of choice.

4. Get each team member to make a change to the file but don't indicate where the change has been made. Once you have made a change save the file. In your terminal stage the change using the command below

   git add storyTime/lorem_ipsum.md

   The core command used here is git add which tells git that you want to track the changes for that file. This can become teadous for multiple files. When you have multiple changes and you want to track them all use the command git add ..

5. Commit your changes and add a descriptive message

   git commit -m "your message here"

   The core command in this case is git commit which commits your changes to the repository. The -m flag indicates that you are adding a message to your commit which is indicated in the "" immediately after the flag.

6. Once you have committed the change push the change to the Github server

   git push

   Although you have commited your changes they only exist on your machine and arent present on the server. The git push command tells your computer to send the changes to the server.

Exercise 3: Branch

1. Within you repository create a new branch by typing the command below

   git branch [your branch here]

2. To start editing using the local branch you created checkout the branch by using the command below

   git checkout [your branch here]

3. Make the changes and commit them using the git commit command as outlined in Exercise 1 - Step 4

4. Push your local branch to the remote git server

   git push -u origin [your branch here]

5. Navigate to the GitHub repository in your browser. You should see a message indicating your branch has a recent push. Click the "Compare & pull request" button.

   

• If the message doesn't appear navigate to the "Pull requests tab" and then create a pull request

6. This will open a pull request. Make sure to add a title and description outlining the changes you made.

   

7. Once you have create the pull request you can merge the branch into the main repository branch. This should be done by the creator of the repository. We suggest the creator share their screen and walk through the steps as a group. In the files changed tab on the right the changes that will be merged can be viewed. Review the changes, add comments under the Conversation tab, and then merge the pull request using the "Merge pull request button"

   

One thing you'll notice is Github is allowing you to automatically merge your changes into the main branch. This is because the changes that you made were relatively simple and Github is able to merge without affecting the code. In the next session we will explore how to merge code that is more complex.