Welcome to the first lesson of our Spring 2018 workshop series: Git and the Command Line!
Version control: Tracking changes to a file or project over time.
Do you have files that look like this?
myproject.doc
myproject2.doc
myproject-final_withpictures.doc
myproject-final-FINAL_for-real.doc
Version control, also called revision control or source control, is a more streamlined means of tracking these changes.
Git: A distributed open source version control system.
In short, git tracks changes by making snapshots of your project at different points in time.
It is worth noting that not every version control system works this way. If you get into using version control for large projects with many repositories or large teams, it is worth looking into the different reasons one might use different version control systems.
Check out this article on the difference between Distributed and Centralized Version Control.
GitHub: A browser-based git client. GitHub takes many project management tools and offers a user interface outside of the command line to work with git-versioned projects.
Some fun uses of GitHub that are not software development:
Recipe sharing
Fictionhub publishing platform
Command Line Interface (CLI): A text-based interface for navigating the computer. With some variation in meaning, other words you'll see are shell, command prompt, and terminal. Why it matters to us right now: outside of GitHub, git uses the command line and knowing a few extra CLI commands beyond git will help you make the most of managing your projects.
The Workshop Links tab has all the links you will need to go through this workshop, including the full Workshop Reference Sheet on DiSSCo's GitHub repository.
