Collaboration, version control & learning to commit
R-thritis Group
David Selby
12th March 2021
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Motivation — why git & GitHub?
"Version control is the only reasonable way to keep track of changes in code, manuscripts, presentations, and data analysis projects...
"GitHub lowers the barriers to collaboration."
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Local version control
- Keep many local copies of files in a folder
- e.g. RCS, Windows File History
Centralised version control
- Check out snapshots of files from single server
- e.g. CVS, Office 365, Dropbox, Isilon
Distributed version control
- Mirror the entire repository, including full history
- e.g. Git, Mercurial
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Git and GitHub
Git ≠ GitHub (just as R ≠ RStudio).
GitHub is a hosting provider for your files, via Git software.
Others are available:
GitHub provides extra features on top of Git:
- issue tracking, documentation, wikis
- GitHub Pages
- GitHub Actions
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Git command line operations
git init/clone- start a new repository (or copy an existing one)
git add/rm- add/remove a file to version control
git diff/status- see what's changed
git commit- save changes to history
git branch/merge- start new branch / merge one into another
git push- upload changes to the remote repository
git pull- download changes from remote repository
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GitHub operations
- Create or fork a repository
- Add files
- Commit changes
- Compare diff versions
- Make and accept pull requests.
RStudio operations
- Init/Clone a repository as an RStudio Project
- Pull changes from remote
- Add files locally
- Commit changes
- Push to remote
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Demonstration
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Further reading
Version control for scientific research (Hrynaszkiewicz, 2013)
Version control with RStudio (Stephens, 2021)
Happy Git and GitHub for the useR (Bryan et al., 2016)
Minimal git/github tutorial guide (Broman, 2013)
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Next Rthritis meeting
Statistical modelling with Stan
Friday 26th March @ 11:00
Belay Birlie Yimer
Contact david.selby@manchester.ac.uk to suggest topics/speakers
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