Getting started with GitHub
Welcome to GitHub fellow programmer! “What is GitHub?” you may wonder. As a software developer rest assured your journey is just beginning. At the point when you’re selling like ‘hot cake’, it will surely be difficult to keep track of the many and different folders that you have used overtime with the software you have developed. Before you run for the hills, I have good news! GitHub is here to help you along your journey to help you keep track of every single one of your projects — all the way.
You just got the one and most important reason for getting started with GitHub, you have to get started soon though such that you don’t lose even a letter from your code through your career.
Let’s dive right in.
First things first…
For GitHub to help you, you have to allow it’s help (obvious, right! But how?). Open an account on GitHub to get started.
Creating Repositories.
“Is this a must?”, you’re asking. YES it is a must. Like the name suggests, the repository will ‘hold things’ for you. By ‘things’ I mean folders and files, images, videos, spreadsheets, and data sets — anything and everything your project needs.
A thousand ways to kill a cat is how I can describe the many places you can go to so as to create a repository in GitHub. I’ll give you the easiest, though, you must go ahead and explore the other various places you can begin creating a repository as the steps that follow are exactly the same regardless where you initiate the process from.
On the landing page after you have successfully signed up on GitHub, on the left column, you see the ‘new’ button in green. Click this button to create your first repository. Give your repository a name in the ‘Repository name’ field and give it a description.
The check options for ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ are a matter of preference as you may desire basing from their description.
All is good now, you can click the Create repository button. Do not close the web page GitHub has redirected you to, we’ll see how to use it as a guide right now.
Connect with your code.
For this next step, we’ll require the help of a software, Git Bash. If you’re familiar with window’s command prompt, liken Git Bash to the command prompt. Only difference is that Git Bash will help you communicate with GitHub unlike the command prompt. You can download Git Bash here.
After downloading and installing Git Bash, launch the program. The first line shown by the program is a path to a system location. We don’t want to be there, so we change our path to the desktop using a command cd command i.e. cd desktop.
We then create a folder on the desktop to ‘mirror’ or represent the repository we created on GitHub on our computer. We do this by using the command mkdir name_of_folder. We then change the path in Git Bash to the new folder i.e. cd name_of_folder (alternatively you can create a folder normally on your desktop and change your path in Git Bash to that folder using the cd command).
The Walkover.
The remaining task to accomplish is to follow the instructions GitHub give under the ‘…or create a new repository on the command line’ section with one small replacement: with your Git Bash path set to the folder in which your code, files and data sets are to be, instead of the echo command, use the touch command i.e. touch README.md.
After creating the folder on the desktop you can see the README.md file created when you open the folder physically on your computer.
Kuddos!! Your journey as a software developer is set, keep moving. We’ll meet again along the way.
