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Introduction to Git and GitHub

GitHub features

GitHub is a great resource for programmers and enthusiasts. Many open-source projects are hosted on Github. Among them, you can find Linux, Tensorflow, and Windows Terminal. You can even find the original code for the Windows Calculator app on GitHub.

Git and Open source community

GitHub hosts millions of open-source projects. With open-source projects, people on different skill levels can work to make technologies more accessible or build meaningful resources for communities. Learning how open-source software is built and maintained can be a great programming class as well.

If you would like to participate in open-source projects on GitHub, October is the perfect month. Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open-source software by DigitalOcean that encourages participation in giving back to the open-source community. Developers get involved by completing pull requests, participating in events, and donating to open-source projects.

GitHub also has many great features that support project development and management. Here, you can find a list of those features and some notes on collaborating with other team members on GitHub.

  • GitHub issues let you track your work on GitHub. When you mention an issue in another issue or pull-request, the issue’s timeline tracks the related work. You can link issues to pull requests.

  • Gist code is a simple way to share code snippets with others. It is used when you need to share a sample piece of code or technique with your co-workers or friends. To learn more GitHub Gists and how to create them, check out GitHub Tutorial on Creating Gists

  • Project management with GitHub is possible is GitHub offers a card-based project management tool like the one offered by Trello. To begin the setup process, you should click on the projects tab in your repository and select create a project. GitHub offers templates to organize tasks within the project workflow. You can also set automatic triggers and link them to Github pull requests.

  • GitHub Wiki is a feature on GitHub to host the documentation of the repository. You can edit wikis directly on GitHub or edit wiki files locally. GitHub Docs give you more information about Github Wikis.

  • GitHub Pages is a static site hosting website that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files straight from a repository on GitHub and publishes a website with them. To learn more about this feature, you can check GitHub Docs or the Introduction to Jekyll workshop.