CMSI 186: Welcome to Week 01

This Week's Class Agenda

• Syllabus
• Tools
• Mousketeer Roll Call
• Initial Homework Assignment
• Java Introduction and Preliminary Fundamentals
• Also of note: Dr. Toal's Basics page
• Development Environment
• Git Essentials One
• Git Essentials Two [see below]

GitHub for Fun and Profit…

GitHub is what is known as a configuration management tool. It is basically a sophisticated way to store and retrieve your files. You need an account, which is free, and once you have that you can create repositories or repos and store as much stuff as you want, also for free. Think of it: unlimited storage of all your code, documents, videos, books, everything.

For

Free

There are several ways to access GitHub. You can use the browser, which will be demonstrated in class and is a VERY easy way to get started. You can also use the command line from a terminal window, and this page will show you some typical commands to use, with explanations. There is also a thing called GitHub Desktop which you can install and use on your local computer. That will be shown in class as well.

Git Essentials Cheat Sheet

Installation

• MAC: $ git --version — do this in a terminal window to prompt your mac to install git
• WIN: go to https://git-scm.com/download/win to get the installer, then install it in the usual way. You will now have a tool called git bash you can use to run commands.

Note: the following instructions assume you are familiar with basic command line functions. You can review them at: this page.

These commands will work either for Mac or WIN using git bash. The $ indicates the terminal window prompt and is NOT part of the commands.

Configuring

• $ git config --global user.name <name>
  Sets your username you want to see in commits [make this your Github username]
• $ git config --global user.email <email address>
  Sets your email you want to see in commits [make this your Github email]

Creating a Repository

• $ git init <repo-name>
  Creates a new local repository with the specified name in your current directory — be sure to change to the desired directory before executing this command!
• $ git clone <URL>
  Downloads a repo with its entire version history in your current directory

Synchronizing Changes

• $ git status
  Shows all new/modified files to be committed
• $ $ git add <file>
  Adds a specific file to the list of files whose changes will be tracked
• $ $ git add .
  Adds all files in the current directory to the list be tracked
• $ $ git commit -m <message>
  Stages all tracked changes to be committed. The -m denotes the short commit message. You should be doing this for all your commits
• $ $ git push
  Pushes commits to Github
• $ $ git pull
  Pulls all new/changed files from Github. Make sure you do this before continuing work, especially if you have collaborators on your repo

Final Note

This is not an exhaustive list of git commands! If you want to get the most out of git, consider checking out a full cheat sheet at: this link.