Git and GitHub Practice

Published

2025-10-24

Getting Comfortable with GitHub

Hopefully you now have some idea about the purpose of Git/GitHub. GitHub is an online hosting service for Git repositories. If you’ve never used Git and GitHub before it is really quite intimidating. We’ll start small and build as we go through the semester! Now let’s do some practice.

  • First, go to github.com and signup for a GitHub account (if you haven’t already).

  • Once you have an account, read this introduction to GitHub (we’ll look at using Git and the command line shortly - for now we’ll stick to the web editor).

    • Follow the steps in the article to create your first repository and do some Git actions!

Once you’ve completed the above part. You should download Git to your computer.

  • See the installing Git page or the corresponding chapter from happy git with R (this one includes some troubleshooting as well).

  • For Windows, there aren’t many things to select as you install but go ahead and include the bash terminal if that’s an option.

Now read through the introduce yourself to Git chapter of happygitwithr.

  • For those that want to use the shell/terminal: Mac has a native shell/terminal/command line interpreter (usually called terminal in your launchpad area).  For Windows folks, after you’ve installed Git you’ll have access to the Git Bash terminal.  Access this by clicking on the start menu and typing in bash. You can also use the command prompt in Windows (cmd in the start menu). I’ll use a bit of both the bash terminal and the Windows command prompt. Commands differ but the functionality is very similar.

Great, now try to work through chapters 9, 11, and 12 of happygitwithr.

  • If you get stuck here, that’s ok. Just move on! This part isn’t really required right now but should be figured out soon so that you can start working seamlessly!
  • If stuck, there is a bit more material about Git/GitHub/RStudio this week. Check that out and then maybe come back here.
  • Set up a meeting with me if you can’t figure this part out soon!

Use the table of contents on the left or the arrows at the bottom of this page to navigate to the next learning material!