Intro to Version Control with Git and Bash Terminal

University of California, Santa Barbara

Dec 14 and 15, 2021

9:30 am - 1:30 pm

Instructors: Kristi Liu, Renata Curty, Jon Jablonski

Helpers: Anita Carraher, Amanda Ho, Annie Huang, Connor Levenson, Amelia Meyers

Registration for this workshop opens on Friday, November 26 at 8:00am PST

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General Information

Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at students of the Center of Black Studies Research SEEDS Program. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: Online.

When: Dec 14 and 15, 2021. Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. Before the workshop, please install the software packages (listed below).

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. For workshops at a physical location, the workshop organizers have checked that:

Contact: Please email library-collaboratory@ucsb.edu for more information.

Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.


Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.


Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey


Schedule

Day 1

Before Pre-workshop survey
09:30 Carpentry Intro and Setup
09:40 Introducing the Shell
09:45 Navigating Files and Directories
10:15 Morning Break
10:25 Working with Files and Directories
10:55 Pipes and Filters
11:25 Loops
12:00 Afternoon Break
12:15 Shell Scripts
12:45 Finding Things
01:20 Review
01:30 End
Follow-up Daily Feedback Survey

Day 2

09:30 Review
09:40 Automatic Version Control
9:50 Setting Up Git
10:10 Creating a Repository
10:25 Morning Break
10:35 Tracking Changes
10:55 Exploring History
11:20 Ignoring Things
11:25 Remotes in GitHub
12:05 Afternoon Break
12:20 Collaborating
12:50 Conflicts
01:20 Review
01:30 End
Follow-up Post-workshop Survey

Setup

To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
You will need to download shell-lesson-data.zip and move it to your desktop.
You will also need to create a Github Account which will be used during the second half of the workshop for Collaborating/Conflicts.

Install the videoconferencing client

The Zoom Meeting Link can be found in the Attendance Reminder email you receive. If you haven't used Zoom before, go to the official website to download and install the Zoom client for your computer.

Set up your workspace

Like other Carpentries workshops, you will be learning by "coding along" with the Instructors. To do this, you will need to have both the window for the tool you will be learning about (a terminal, RStudio, your web browser, etc..) and the window for the Zoom video conference client open. In order to see both at once, we recommend using one of the following set up options:

This blog post includes detailed information on how to set up your screen to follow along during the workshop.

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do tasks more quickly.

  1. Download the Git for Windows installer.
  2. Run the installer and follow the steps below:
    1. Click on "Next" four times (two times if you've previously installed Git). You don't need to change anything in the Information, location, components, and start menu screens.
    2. From the dropdown menu select "Use the Nano editor by default" (NOTE: you will need to scroll up to find it) and click on "Next".
    3. On the page that says "Adjusting the name of the initial branch in new repositories", ensure that "Let Git decide" is selected. This will ensure the highest level of compatibility for our lessons.
    4. Ensure that "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software" is selected and click on "Next". (If you don't do this Git Bash will not work properly, requiring you to remove the Git Bash installation, re-run the installer and to select the "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software" option.)
    5. Ensure that "Use the native Windows Secure Channel Library" is selected and click on "Next".
    6. Ensure that "Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings" is selected and click on "Next".
    7. Ensure that "Use Windows' default console window" is selected and click on "Next".
    8. Ensure that "Default (fast-forward or merge) is selected and click "Next"
    9. Ensure that "Git Credential Manager Core" is selected and click on "Next".
    10. Ensure that "Enable file system caching" is selected and click on "Next".
    11. Click on "Install".
    12. Click on "Finish" or "Next".
  3. If your "HOME" environment variable is not set (or you don't know what this is):
    1. Open command prompt (Open Start Menu then type cmd and press Enter)
    2. Type the following line into the command prompt window exactly as shown:

      setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"

    3. Press Enter, you should see SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.
    4. Quit command prompt by typing exit then pressing Enter

This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.

Video Tutorial

The default shell in some versions of macOS is Bash, and Bash is available in all versions, so no need to install anything. You access Bash from the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities). See the Git installation video tutorial for an example on how to open the Terminal. You may want to keep Terminal in your dock for this workshop.

To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL in Terminal and press the Return key. If the message printed does not end with '/bash' then your default is something else and you can run Bash by typing bash

If you want to change your default shell, see this Apple Support article and follow the instructions on "How to change your default shell".

Video Tutorial

The default shell is usually Bash and there is usually no need to install anything.

To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL in a terminal and press the Enter key. If the message printed does not end with '/bash' then your default is something else and you can run Bash by typing bash.

Git

Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser.

You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.

For macOS, install Git for Mac by downloading and running the most recent "mavericks" installer from this list. Because this installer is not signed by the developer, you may have to right click (control click) on the .pkg file, click Open, and click Open on the pop up window. After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications folder, as Git is a command line program. For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard" available here.

Video Tutorial

If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install git and for Fedora run sudo dnf install git.

Text Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. The default text editor on macOS and Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being intuitive. If you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, hit the Esc key, followed by :+Q+! (colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It is installed along with Git.

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. See the Git installation video tutorial for an example on how to open nano. It should be pre-installed.

Video Tutorial

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.