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all tracks

GitHub

start here

Learn how real software teams share code, review each other's work, and never lose a file again.

roughly one or two meetings

Before you start

  • A GitHub account, and an invite to the club organization. Both are covered on the Start here page.
New here? Start with the setup steps

When you finish, you can

  • Explain what a repository, a branch, and a pull request actually are
  • Change a file and open a pull request without touching a command line
  • Review somebody else's pull request and leave a useful comment
  • Have at least one merged contribution to the club website

This is the track everybody starts with, because everything else in the club runs on it. You do not need a command line for any of it.

What you will actually do

  1. Read a repository. Open the club site repo and find where the project files live. Sounds trivial. It is the thing that makes everything else make sense.
  2. Make a branch. A branch is a safe copy where your change lives until somebody agrees it is good. Nothing you do on a branch can break the live site.
  3. Open a pull request. This is you saying “here is my change, please look at it.” A check runs automatically to confirm the site still builds.
  4. Get it reviewed and merged. Somebody reads it, maybe asks a question, then merges. About a minute later it is live on the internet.
  5. Review somebody else’s. Harder than it sounds and more useful than you expect. Reading other people’s work is most of the job.

The bit that trips people up

A pull request is not a request to pull something. It is a request that somebody pull your change into the main copy. The name is bad. Everyone agrees the name is bad.

When you are done

Add yourself to a project on the Build page, or fix a typo you spot anywhere on this site. Both are real contributions and both count.

cat example.bash

github-example
git switch -c my-first-change
git add .
git commit -m "Add my project to the site"
git push

ls ./resources

Keep going

Free, and worth your time. You do not need all of them — pick the one whose style suits you.