Summary and Schedule
Jimmy and Alfredo have been hired by Ratatuoille restaurant (a special restaurant from Euphoric State University) to investigate if it is possible to make the best recipes archive ever. They want to be able to work on indexing the prices at the same time, but they have run into problems doing this in the past. If they take turns, each one will spend a lot of time waiting for the other to finish, but if they work on their own copies and email changes back and forth things will be lost, overwritten, or duplicated.
A colleague suggests using version control to manage their work. Version control is better than mailing files back and forth:
Nothing that is committed to version control is ever lost, unless you work really, really hard at it. Since all old versions of files are saved, it’s always possible to go back in time to see exactly who wrote what on a particular day, or what version of a program was used to generate a particular set of results.
As we have this record of who made what changes when, we know who to ask if we have questions later on, and, if needed, revert to a previous version, much like the “undo” feature in an editor.
When several people collaborate in the same project, it’s possible to accidentally overlook or overwrite someone’s changes. The version control system automatically notifies users whenever there’s a conflict between one person’s work and another’s.
Teams are not the only ones to benefit from version control: lone researchers can benefit immensely. Keeping a record of what was changed, when, and why is extremely useful for all researchers if they ever need to come back to the project later on (e.g., a year later, when memory has faded).
Version control is the lab notebook of the digital world: it’s what professionals use to keep track of what they’ve done and to collaborate with other people. Every large software development project relies on it, and most programmers use it for their small jobs as well. And it isn’t just for software: books, papers, small data sets, and anything that changes over time or needs to be shared can and should be stored in a version control system.
Prerequisites
In this lesson we use Git from the Unix Shell. Some previous experience with the shell is expected, but isn’t mandatory.
| Setup Instructions | Download files required for the lesson | |
| Duration: 00h 00m | 1. Automated Version Control | What is version control and why should I use it? |
| Duration: 00h 05m | 2. Setting Up Git | How do I get set up to use Git? |
| Duration: 00h 10m | 3. Creating a Repository | Where does Git store information? |
| Duration: 00h 20m | 4. Tracking Changes |
How do I record changes in Git? How do I check the status of my version control repository? How do I record notes about what changes I made and why? |
| Duration: 00h 40m | 5. Exploring History |
How can I identify old versions of files? How do I review my changes? How can I recover old versions of files? |
| Duration: 01h 05m | 6. Ignoring Things | How can I tell Git to ignore files I don’t want to track? |
| Duration: 01h 10m | 7. Remotes in GitHub | How do I share my changes with others on the web? |
| Duration: 01h 55m | 8. Collaborating | How can I use version control to collaborate with other people? |
| Duration: 02h 20m | 9. Conflicts | What do I do when my changes conflict with someone else’s? |
| Duration: 02h 35m | 10. Open Science | How can version control help me make my work more open? |
| Duration: 02h 45m | 11. Licensing | What licensing information should I include with my work? |
| Duration: 02h 50m | 12. Citation | How can I make my work easier to cite? |
| Duration: 02h 52m | 13. Hosting | Where should I host my version control repositories? |
| Duration: 03h 02m | 14. Supplemental: Using Git from RStudio | How can I use Git with RStudio? |
| Duration: 03h 12m | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.
Installing Git
Since several Carpentries lessons rely on Git, please see this section of the workshop template for instructions on installing Git for various operating systems.
Preparing Your Working Directory
We’ll do our work in the Desktop folder so make sure you
change your working directory to it with: