GitHub is a Git repository hosting service. GitHub also facilitates with many of its features, such as access control and collaboration. It provides a Web-based graphical interface.
GitHub is an American company. It hosts source code of your project in the form of different programming languages and keeps track of the various changes made by programmers.
It offers both distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git. It also facilitates with some collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management for every project.
GitHub is one of the world’s largest community of developers. It’s an intricate platform that fosters collaboration and communication between developers. GitHub has a number of useful features that enable development teams to work together on the same project and easily create new versions of software without disrupting the current versions, but it doesn’t stop there.
Once new additions to a program are complete, for example, they can easily be incorporated into existing programs. GitHub also makes it extremely simple to work together on strings of code to really dial in and perfect even the smallest parts of a program. With GitHub, you can collaborate and work on projects with others anywhere in the world.
Features:
GitHub is a place where programmers and designers work together. They collaborate, contribute, and fix bugs together. It hosts plenty of open source projects and codes of various programming languages.
Some of its significant features are as follows.
- Collaboration
- Integrated issue and bug tracking
- Graphical representation of branches
- Git repositories hosting
- Project management
- Team management
- Code hosting
- Track and assign tasks
- Conversations
- Wikisc
Benefits:
GitHub can be separated as the Git and the Hub. GitHub service includes access controls as well as collaboration features like task management, repository hosting, and team management.
The key benefits of GitHub are as follows.
- It is easy to contribute to open source projects via GitHub.
- It helps to create an excellent document.
- You can attract recruiter by showing off your work. If you have a profile on GitHub, you will have a higher chance of being recruited.
- It allows your work to get out there in front of the public.
- You can track changes in your code across versions.
How to Get Started Using GitHub
Here’s how to get started. Just a heads up: You should be comfortable using the command line before working with GitHub, as Git uses the terminal as its interface.
- Install the latest version of Git on your device. You’ll need Git installed to work with your GitHub repository. There are various ways to do this, so follow the recommendations on the Git website. The Git software is free.
- After installing Git, go to GitHub’s website and create an account with your email address.
- Once your GitHub account is set up, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. To start your first repository, click Create repository on the left side.
- On the Create a new repository screen, enter your repository name and an optional description (you can change both later).
- On the same screen, add a README file (a text file that describes your project, and a best practice in development), a .gitignore (which removes irrelevant files like .DS_Store), and a license for your project.
- Click Create repository. You’ll be taken to your main repository page, which lists your files.
- You’ll now create a local copy of your GitHub repository (or in GitHub terms, “clone” your repository) where you’ll edit your files and push your changes. On your main repository page, click the green Code button, then copy the HTTPS URL of your repository.
- Open your terminal and navigate to the directory you want to place your repository copy.
- In the terminal, enter git clone. After this paste in the repository URL that you previously copied. Your command should look like this:
git clone https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-name.git
- Press Enter to clone the repository. You’ll see a new file added to your local filesystem with your repository’s name. If you open this file, you’ll see it contains the files in your GitHub repository. These are copied versions of your repository’s files that you can edit and then push back to your repository.
- Let’s end by creating a new file in your cloned repository, then pushing it to GitHub. In your local clone, create a new text file called hello.txt. In it, paste the text Hello, world! and save the file.
- In the terminal, navigate to inside your cloned repository.
- In the terminal, type git add . and press Enter. This prepares all files in your cloned repository to be pushed.
- In the terminal, type git commit -m “added hello.txt” and press Enter. This commits your changes to the changelog. The text in quotes is a comment briefly describing the purpose of the commit.
- Type git push origin main in the terminal and press Enter.
- Back in your GitHub repository, you’ll see your new file added.