Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
94 lines (74 loc) · 3.77 KB

1_Introduction.md

File metadata and controls

94 lines (74 loc) · 3.77 KB
Raw

title: Version control with Git

Based on materials by Mike Jackson, Greg Wilson, Chris Cannam, Katy Huff, Anthony Scopatz, Joshua R. Smith, and Sri Hari Krishna Narayanan. All materials created originally for Software Carpentrty

Introduction: What is version control?

Version control is a piece of software which allows you to record and preserve the history of changes made to directories and files. If you're familiar with Track Changes in Microsoft Word, or the versions of files saved in DropBox or GoogleDrive, then you've already used a simple form of version control.

Think about the following situations:

  • Someone asks you, "Can I have the code you used to create the data that you graphed in your conference paper?". How easy would it be for you to get this code for them?
  • Someone tells you, "Your laptop's just been stolen!". How much work have you lost?
  • You're working with a colleague on a journal paper who storms into your office and shouts, "You've just deleted my analysis section". Would you have to ask them to write it again?
  • You're developing a piece of software with your colleagues. You find that a function you wrote has been rewritten and you want to know why, how easy would it be to find this out? Also, you can't exactly remember the implementation details and you accidentaly deleted the copy of the source code you had on your laptop. You would still like to use your original code. What would you do?

Version control, also known as revision control, helps with all of these problems. It is typically used for software source code, but it can also be used for:

  • Configuration files.
  • Parameter sets.
  • Data files.
  • User documentation, manuals, conference papers, journal papers, book chapters, whether they be plain-text, LaTeX, XML, or whatever.

There are different types of version control. They may be divided into two types: centralized and distributed version control. An example of the former is Subversion (SVN) and of the latter is Git. Centralized version control has one main repository (on a server) whilst in the case of distributed version control everyone has their own (local) repository.

For this session, we'll be using Git, a popular version control system and GitHub, a web-based service providing remote repositories.

Outline

  1. Setting up and working with a local repository.
  2. Looking at differences.
  3. Discarding changes, undoing things.
  4. Travelling back in time.
  5. Branching, merging and resolving conflicts.
  6. Rebasing - introduction.
  7. Setting up and working with remote repositories.
  8. Collaborative work over a remote repository (including Pull Requests).
  9. Tips&tricks and resources for learning Git further.
  10. Summary and Q&A.s

Agenda

10:00 - 10:30 Introduction to version control

10:30 - 12:00 Setting up and working with local repository (including: diffs, undoing things, looking back at history etc.)

12:00 - 13:00 Lunch

13:00 - 14:30 Branching (creating branches and working with them); merging with and without conflicts; a bit of internals of Git (pointers, commits, branches); intro to rebasing

14:30 - 15:00 Setting up a remote repository and working with it (commit-push-pull-clone etc.); few words about GitHub

15:00 - 15:30 Break

15:30 - 16:15 Collaborating in pairs/groups on remote repository in GutHub - introduction to the Push-Pull workflow; getting others' changes into your local repository; resolving conflicts

16:15 -17:00 Pull Requests in GitHub - collaboration without having write permits to a repo/contributing to large projects

Next: Creating and working with local repository