Get the required accounts (if you haven’t already)

1. Sign up for github. Remember this advice about picking a username. Remember your username and password, you’ll need them again soon.

2. Sign up for rstudio.cloud, then join the ST541 Fall 2018 workspace by following this link

Accepting a homework assignment

1. In canvas find Homework 1 under Assignments.
   • Follow the link provided to github.
   • Github will start to copy over the required files
   • Once it’s finished follow the link to your new repository

   

2. Take a look around This is a git repository, repo for short. A git repo is just a folder of files along with a history of those files. When you host a git repository on github you get some nice extras, some most relevant to us:
   • An easy way to navigate the files
   • Previews of certain files types
   • Issues - a way to start discussions on the repository

Your Turn:

• What is the name of your repository? How does it differ from your neighbors?
• How can you tell this repository is private?
• Scroll down, you should see the contents of the file README.md. What’s in this file?

Get your homework 1 repository into rstudio.cloud

To actually to do some work on your homework, you’ll “clone” this repository to rstudio.cloud as a project.

1. In github, click the “Clone or Download” button, then copy the URL given to the clipboard.

2. Head to the ST541 Fall 2018 workspace on RStudio Cloud, click the small arrow next to “New Project” and select “New project from Git repo”.

3. Paste in the Clone URL you copied earlier. You’ll be prompted for your github username and password. RStudio Cloud will then clone your repo into an RStudio Project.

   

4. Take a look through the files in the Files pane. How do these compare to those on github?

Preliminaries in rstudio.cloud

There are a few things we need to do to tell git who we are before working on this project. (You’ll need to do this with each new project in RStudio Cloud).

In the Terminal in your RStudio Cloud project, copying the following, but substituting in your name and email address:

git config --global user.email "your email here"
git config --global user.name "your name here"
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout 3600'

The last line extends the time interval that our github username and password are valid for, so you should only be asked for it once more in lab. You can use the line:

git config --global --list

to check you’ve set them correctly.

Make edits in README.md

1. In your project in RStudio Cloud open up README.md. You might like to compare the contents of this file to that shown in your repo on github.com.

   README.md is a Markdown file, a plain text format that allows for simple formatting like section headings and lists. On Github Markdown files get rendered into a nice formatted preview.

2. Do some work Edit README.md in RStudio Cloud to add your name after Name: in the file. Save the file.

   Right now this edit just lives in your project on RStudio cloud, for me to be able to see you’ve completed this task, you’ll have to commit the change to git, then push the change to github.

3. Commit In the Git pane, you’ll see the file README.md because it has changed since from the most recent version committed. To commit this change, we need to stage the file (check the box next to its name), then commit.

   A new window will open. You can browse any changed file here and see what has changed (although only those that are staged will be commited). In the “Commit message” area, describe the change you’ve made then hit the Commit button.

4. Push This change still only lives here in RStudio, to send it to github, hit Push.

5. Head back to Github and see your change is now recorded there.

   

Your Turn: Practice this workflow again by editing README.md to check off the first task. Add an x between the [ ] next to the first task, commit, and push. Take a look on github to see the result.