Prep and Installation
To join the wonderful world of version control, please create a GitHub account and install Git on your system.
GitHub is a Git repository hosting service, a place to store and sync your work in the cloud. Take a minute to create a free account. They provide some great introductory tutorials, but you can probably ignore them if you are coming to the workshop!
Install Git
- Windows: install Git for Windows using the default options. This will give you Git, Git Bash, and Git GUI. Git Bash is a great terminal that lets you use UNIX style commands on Windows.
- Mac: check if Git is already installed by opening terminal and typing
git --version. If you do not have it, download the official Mac installer. - Linux: install from your distribution’s software center or package manager (for Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install git).
Git GUIs (optional)
This workshop introduces the basic Git workflow using the command line. However, you may prefer a GUI application for your future day-to-day work with Git. There are a variety of GUI apps available for managing and visualizing Git repositories.
If you are interested in using a simple visual app integrated with GitHub, Windows and Mac users should install GitHub Desktop using the default options. A more powerful alternative is SourceTree from Atlassian / BitBucket. On Linux gitg and GitKraken are good options.
Text Editor (optional)
When working with code you should have a good text editor. Windows notepad does not handle UTF-8 encoding or UNIX line endings that are standard for most cross platform applications. For basic editing, Windows Notepad++, Mac TextEdit, or Linux Gedit are sufficient. However, a more complete code editor will be helpful for working on projects.
Open-source cross platform suggestions: