Downloading GIT
In order to employ the idea of version control, we will use a popular tool known as Git. Git is an incredibly powerful, open source version control system that keeps track of repositories/projects, the changes team members make to them, and orchestrates everything for us behind the scenes. Since Git doesn't come with a GUI out of the box, meaning it is typically dealt with in the terminal, we will need to download a GUI so we can easily interact with Git. For now, we can download Git and not worry about the terminal.
Download HereCreating A Github Account
Github.com is an online version control system, where students, developers, and programmers in general can store their school, personal, or club projects. Users can create 'repositories', and other users can contribute to these projects, or copy them to their local machine and mess with them themselves. We can think of Github as the social media for coding and projects. For all of our projects in this club, we will create repositories on Github.com so that each member of the club can access them. Click the image or the button to create an account and get started.
Create Account Here
Downloading Github Desktop
Now that we have Git installed, as well as a Github account created, we can now focus on obtaining a GUI for Git, so that we do not need to use a terminal to manage our repositories. Github Desktop will make 'cloning' our club repositorires as easy as a click, and will manage every change, branch creation, and everything else, in one simple window. Go ahead and download it now!
Download HereLinking Github Desktop to Your Github Account
Before we can start editing repositories and pushing our changes, we must configure Git (which we downloaded earlier) with your Github account. Click the image or button for more information on how to configure the two!
Configuration Help
Cloning Our First Repository
With all of the boring downloads and configurations out of the way, we should hopefully be ready to add a repository and make changes to it. To do this, we need the repository URL from Github so that we can download it on our local machine through Github Desktop. Navigate to the repository you'd like to clone, and get the URL from here! If you've already been added as a contributor to the porject, don't worry about grabbing the URL.
Working within Github Desktop
Upon opening Github Desktop, you'll be prompted to log in and authorize your identity to Github.com. After completing this step, you'll offered multiple options on how you can clone a repository. For this example, we will clone a repository that is being hosted on Github, so choose the option "Clone a Repository from the Internet", as shown in the image.
Cloning from your Available Github.com Repo's
If, through Github.com, you have access to the repositories created by the club, you can view them here and choose to clone them this way. This removes the need of having a URL to the repository. Simply choose the proper project, choose the local directory to save it to, and press clone.
Using a URL to Clone
If you find yourself needing to clone a repository from the URL we obtained before, simply switch to the URL tab, enter the URL of the repository, choose your directory location to save to, and hit clone.
