Codelab / Chapter 04

Version Control

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Lesson

Git for Humanists

1. Review Codelab to this point
2. How to collaborate digitally?
3. Version Control Systems
4. Git and Github

Setup

There’s a bit of setup for git that I forgot to have y’all do. First, we need to set up name and email in Git. You don’t have to use your real identity, but if it might be useful to have people be able to contact you about your change. Github has some strategies for maintaining some privacy for this step.

git config --global user.email [email protected]
git config --global user.name 'Public Name'

Then, we’ll want to set the default text editor if you end up using git through the command line. Vim is the default and it’s another thing to learn if you don’t already know how to use it, so I would suggest nano as an easier to use option:

git config --global core.editor "nano"

New Terms

• Clone/Fork: A version control operation to create a duplicate repository. In Git, “clone” is the command to duplicate a repository to your local computer; in Github, fork is the mechanism to duplicate a repository to your own Github account. These are functionally the same. Forking has a more permanent implication in traditional version control systems, but it can be much more transient in Git.
• Commit: A set of changes that can be referenced later (and reverted or reverted to). We can think of a commit as a milestone or version of a repository. It should be organized such that the change itself is legible (ideally, a specific and interrelated set of updates and not just a disordered mess of revisions) and the state of the repo it represents is sensible (in that the state is comprehensible if you ever have to go back to it).
• Git: The most popular version control system in use today and the software command (git) used to interact with it.
• GitHub: A website and web service that hosts and manages git repositories online. Often used as the canonical, remote repository to coordinate the work of individuals local repositories. Purchased by Microsoft in 2018, to much hand-wringing.
• Merge: An important version control function, which multiple, concurrent changes to the same file to be rectified. A file that cannot be automatically rectified is said to be in a “merge conflict.”
• Repository (“repo”): The basic data store that contains all the files for a particular project.
• Staging: In Git and other similar version control systems that use changesets, we explicitly stage specific files that we intend to be part of a commit before committing them. In git, the command to stage a file is git add <filename/directory>. Wildcards are allowed (e.g. git add *). We can stage all updated files that git is tracking already (i.e. older versions of the files are already in git) using the -p flag: git add -A).
• Version Control: A software system that allows programmers (and other people who work with digital files) to track their work and collaborate with others by providing Concurrency (maintaining consistancy despite multiple editors), Reservibility (keeping track of changes and allowing work to be undone), and Annotation (describing changes through labels, timestamps, and author information).

Homework

Do:

1. Add an icebreaker question (or questions) to the icebreaker git practice document and check back on it every few days to answer all the previous, unanswered questions.