• A version control system.
• Its original purpose was to help groups of developers work collaboratively on big software projects.
• Git manages the evolution of a set of files – called a repository – in a sane, highly structured way.

• First, register a GitHub account.
• Please choose a username that you would feel comfortable showing it to your boss later!
  • coolcoder, freakingawesome, etc. are probably not good ideas.
  • use your real names (so people can recognize you)
• Sign up for GitHub Education
  • Free pro plan after verificating student’s status

• There are a lot of different ways to use Git:
  • The command line terminal (sometimes referred to as the shell)
  • Through a client, like RStudio.
  • GitHub Desktop

• Now, introduce yourself to Git
  • if you’re using the command line terminal or through a client (RStudio), you have to enter the following commands in the terminal.

git config --global user.name 'Jane Doe'
git config --global user.email 'jane@example.com'
git config --global --list

• Create a repo on GitHub
• Clone the repo to your local computer
• Make a local change, commit, push
• Confirm the change on GitHub remote repo

• Git has three main states that your files can reside in:
  • modified
  • staged
  • committed

• Modified means that you have changed the file but have not committed it to your database yet.
• Staged means that you have marked a modified file in its current version to go into your next commit snapshot.
• Committed means that the data is safely stored in your local database.

• This leads us to the three main sections of a Git project:
  • the working tree/directory
  • the staging area
  • the Git directory (repository)

• The basic Git workflow goes something like this:
  • You modify files in your working tree.
  • You selectively stage just those changes you want to be part of your next commit, which adds only those changes to the staging area.
  • You do a commit, which takes the files as they are in the staging area and stores that snapshot permanently to your Git directory.
  • When you’re ready to update the remote repo, push the commit(s).

• Explore your OS’s command line interface
• Installing Git

• Happy Git and GitHub for the useR by Jenny Bryan, the STAT 545 TAs, Jim Hester
• Pro Git by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub