Before the start of the workshop, we’d like you to:

  • make sure you have git and GitHub installed

  • create a GitHub account

The following short tutorial will help walk you through each of these steps! Please contact Sam at samantha.straus@mcgill.ca, if you need help with any of these steps.

You may be asking yourself, “what’s the difference between git and GitHub?” Git is a version control software that you can use on your computer to track changes to text-based documents, e.g. code. GitHub is a web-based service for managing your git repositories remotely, allowing for multiple contributors to make and track changes.

Install GitHub Desktop on your computer

We’ll install the GitHub Desktop application first, as this should also install the most recent version of git to your computer (GitHub has a handy installation guide on their website). We’ll be using this application during the workshop, as it’s one of the most user-friendly ways to interact with your remote repositories.

You can download GitHub Desktop here.

Confirm git installation

Installing the desktop application should have also installed the git program, but let’s double check just to be sure! For this, we have to go briefly to the command line/terminal. We can do this very easily by typing git --version into the Terminal, accessible through RStudio.

Check your git version by using the terminal in RStudio

If, for some reason, you don’t have git installed, there are several other options for doing so. See GitHub’s installation guide on their website and this guide for some helpful additional instructions.

Many (but not all!) of the options for installation are command line based, which can be intimidating if you’re not used to it. If you encounter any issues installing git, please contact Sam Straus at .

Create GitHub account

To use remote repositories stored on GitHub, you’ll need to create an account. It’s free and easy to do! My favorite GitHub learning resource, Happy Git with R, has some tips on how to create a good GitHub username.

Take our short survey!

We would like to gauge how many participants were able to get through all these steps, so we can adjust our workshop pacing as needed. Additionally, in the second half of the workshop we will split into small groups to practice git commands. The organizers will create and assign you to repositories with some template files for you to practice with in your groups. As part of this short survey, we will ask for your GitHub username, so that we can add you to groups ahead of time.

Take the survey

Why use git?

Here’s are some suggested materials about why we should use git and github.

Crystal-Ornelas, R., Edwards, B., Hébert, K., Hudgins, E. J., Sánchez-Reyes, L. L., Scott, E. R., … Braga, P. H. P. (2022, July 13). Not just for programmers: How GitHub can accelerate collaborative and reproducible research in ecology and evolution. https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/x3p2q

GitHub for supporting, reusing, contributing, and failing safely. https://www.openscapes.org/blog/2022/05/27/github-illustrated-series/

A Question of Code - Ep. 35: Do you git it? (What is version control?). https://open.spotify.com/episode/3TZRYdivudSmQiSL3bw4zF

License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0