Version Control with Git

Collaborating

Learning Objectives

  • Clone a remote repository.
  • Collaborate pushing to a common repository.

For the next step, get into pairs. One person will be the “Owner” and the other will be the “Collaborator”. The goal is that the Collaborator add changes into the Owner’s repository. We will switch roles at the end, so both persons will play Owner and Collaborator.

The Owner needs to give the Collaborator access. On GitHub, click the settings button on the right, then select Collaborators, and enter your partner’s username.

Adding collaborators on GitHub

Adding collaborators on GitHub

To accept access to the Owner’s repo, the Collaborator needs to go to https://github.com/notifications. Once there she can accept access to the Owner’s repo.

Next, the Collaborator needs to download a copy of the Owner’s repository to her machine. This is called “cloning a repo”. To clone the Owner’s repo into her Desktop folder, the Collaborator enters:

$ git clone https://github.com/vlad/planets.git ~/Desktop/vlad-planets

Replace ‘vlad’ with the Owner’s username.

After Creating Clone of Repository

After Creating Clone of Repository

The Collaborator can now make a change in her clone of the Owner’s repository, exactly the same way as we’ve been doing before:

$ cd ~/Desktop/vlad-planets
$ nano pluto.txt
$ cat pluto.txt
It is so a planet!
$ git add pluto.txt
$ git commit -m "Some notes about Pluto"
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 pluto.txt

Then push the change to the Owner’s repository on GitHub:

$ git push origin master
Counting objects: 4, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 306 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/vlad/planets.git
   9272da5..29aba7c  master -> master

Note that we didn’t have to create a remote called origin: Git uses this name by default when we clone a repository. (This is why origin was a sensible choice earlier when we were setting up remotes by hand.)

Take a look to the Owner’s repository on its GitHub website now (maybe you need to refresh your browser.) You should be able to see the new commit made by the Collaborator.

To download the Collaborator’s changes from GitHub, the Owner now enters:

$ git pull origin master
remote: Counting objects: 4, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 3 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From https://github.com/vlad/planets
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Updating 9272da5..29aba7c
Fast-forward
 pluto.txt | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 pluto.txt

Now the three repositories (Owner’s local, Collaborator’s local, and Owner’s on GitHub) are back in sync.

Review changes

Switch roles and repeat the whole process.

Review changes

The Owner push commits to the repository without giving any information to the Collaborator. How can the Collaborator find out what has changed with command line? And on GitHub?

Comment changes in GitHub

The Collaborator has some questions about one line change made by the Owner and has some suggestions to propose.

With GitHub, it is possible to comment the diff of a commit. Over the line of code to comment, a blue comment icon appears to open a comment window.

The Collaborator posts its comments and suggestions using GitHub interface.

Version history, backup and version control

Some backup software can keep a history of the versions of your files. They also allows you to recover specific versions. How is this functionality different from version control? What are some of the benifits of using version control, Git and Github?