Overview

This assignment will help you get comfortable with the GitHub workflow we’ll be using throughout the semester. You’ll practice keeping your repository in sync, making changes both through GitHub.com and on your local computer, and maintaining good documentation habits.

Review

  • Before starting, make sure you’ve completed all of the following steps from the tutorial đź’» Getting Up and Running With GitHub:
    • Created a GitHub account
    • Installed GitHub Desktop
    • Forked the course repository and renamed it to include your last name (ex. blevins-sp25-data-materials)
    • Cloned your fork to your local computer

As a reminder, here is the GitHub workflow:

Image

Check For Updates

⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ Before starting any new work in this class, you always want to check for any updates from your instructor’s sp25-data-materials repository.

  • Open GitHub Desktop and select your course repository
  • Click Fetch origin to check for any changes
  • Go to Branch → Merge into current branch → select upstream/main and click Create a merge commit if there are updates
  • Click Pull origin if it’s available (if not, you’re up to date!)
  • Click Push origin to sync everything up

Task 1: Add a New File and Push it to your Fork

  • Inside your local week-01 folder, navigate to week-01-homework
  • Create a text file called github-notes.txt inside week-01-homework
  • Write down either a question you have about the GitHub workflow OR which Github vocabulary word you find the funniest: fork, clone, or fetch.
  • Commit this file using GitHub Desktop (ie. officially take a snapshot of your changes)
  • Push the changes to your fork repository

Task 2: Web-Based Editing on Github.com (with bonus Markdown practice!)

The next step is to create a new file on your fork on Github.com, then pull those updates down to your local computer. We are going to practice making a file in Markdown - a format we’ll talk more about in coming weeks. Don’t worry too much about it for now!

  • Go to your repository on GitHub.com
  • Navigate to your week-01/week-01-homework folder
  • Create a new file called about-me.md
  • This is a Markdown file. Take a look at the Basic Syntax guide and refer to it to do the following:
    • Write “About Me” as a Heading Level 1
    • Write “Goals for this class” formatted as Heading Level 2
    • Create a bulleted list of 2-3 things you hope to learn in this class
    • Use bold and italics at least once each in your file
  • Once you’ve finished, write a clear commit message describing what you added
  • Commit the file directly on GitHub.com
  • Look at the repository and click on the file - it should have a “preview” or your Markdown file that is properly formatted (with headings instead of ## signs, etc.)
  • Open GitHub Desktop and click “Fetch origin” to pull these changes to your computer

Task 3: Adding a Local Image File

  • Find a photo of one of your favorite places (can be a place you’ve been or want to visit)
  • Save or move this photo to your week-01/week-01-homework folder on your computer
  • Open GitHub Desktop and you should see the new file appear
  • Commit these changes with a summary message explaining what the photo is
  • Push these changes in Github Desktop to your forked repository on Github.com

Check your work

Before submitting, check to make sure that your local repository and your forked repository on Github.com are matching up. Each of them should have three new files in week-01-homework folder:

  • github-notes.txt
  • about-me.md
  • some photo file

Submission

You’re going to make two submissions (ie. two “attempts”) on the Canvas assignment page:

  • First submission: Submit a URL link to your GitHub repository (ie. https://github.com/yourusername/yourlastname-sp25-data-materials)
  • Second submission: Submit a screenshot (or several screenshots, if necessary) of your local repository on your computer that shows all the above files inside the correct folder system (Screenshot instructions for Mac, Windows)
  • If you’re having trouble with multiple attempts, you can also add a comment on your Canvas assignment that provides the URL link to your GitHub repository