Versioning your Data and Scripts

December, 2019

Authors: Bob Freeman (devbioinfoguy), Radhika Khetani (rkhetani), Meeta Mistry (mistrm82), Kathleen Keating (kthlnktng)

Overview:

Tired of wading through files/folders titled ‘paper_v1’, ‘paper_v2’, ‘paper_v3_beforeAdvisor’… ? This hands-on workshop will introduce the concepts of using a version control system to manage changes and the history of your data files (text, data, scripts, etc.) with Git using the GitKraken interface, as well as on GitHub.

Attendees will participate in multiple exercises to learn how version control works, including:

• setting up Git repositories
• recording changes
• working both locally and remotely on GitHub
• managing conflicts
• best practices for working with version control

Pre-lesson Preparation:

1. Please Download and install GitKraken.
2. Create an account for yourself on GitHub. Please be sure to select the free/academic account, as this option has more long-term flexibility.
3. Download the workshop sample files zipped folder and unzip it.

Lessons:

1. Introduction to Version Control
2. Getting Started with Git using GitKraken
3. Remote repositories
4. Managing Conflicts

• Materials used in these lessons are derived from Daniel van Strien’s “An Introduction to Version Control Using GitHub Desktop,”, Programming Historian, (17 June 2016). The Programming Historian ISSN 2397-2068, is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).*

• Materials are also derived from Software Carpentry instructional material. These materials are also licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).*

NOTE: These materials and the files within are governed by the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).