Installing GitHub Desktop

Your goals are:

1. Install GitHub Desktop on your computer

Overview

As almost all the software involved in a modern web mapping workflow involves plain text files (information encoded in human-readable characters). The essential tools for a web mapper make handling these text files in a consistent and trackable manner. One tool is Git, which we will use in this course through GitHub and GitHub Desktop. Git is open source software and allows for tracking changes in computer files and coordinating work among multiple people.

We'll use GitHub, a web platform company that implements Git, to backup projects and share them with the instructor and, eventually, the public. Most of the New Maps Plus courses use Git and Github, so learning this workflow in MAP 671 will help you in future courses.

You've already started to use GitHub in this course by setting up your account and accessing this repository.

What is Git?

Git is a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS). A version control system (VCS) records all changes made to a computer file or set of files. A VCS allows you to review any changes made to files and allows previous versions of files or projects to be recalled later. If you mess something up, accidentally delete or copy over a file, you can retrieve an earlier copy of that file.

There are many resources about version control systems available online. For example, this introduction from Microsoft.

What makes Git a Distributed Version Control System is that when you copy a repository to your local computer, you have the entire, working version of the project. We'll use this feature of Git throughout MAP 671.

Installing GitHub Desktop Client

Now that we have our remote GitHub account set up on the web, let's get the GitHub Desktop running on your local computer.

We'll use GitHub Desktop Client for this course. Depending on your operating system, download the suggested GitHub Desktop Client.

Once downloaded and opened, GitHub Desktop will ask you to walk through some configuration steps. Enter your GitHub username and password. If you see the section on providing your identity for commit messages, supply your name and email. Please use your real name so that your colleagues and instructors can identify you in the repository's commit history. This configuration allows the Desktop Client application to pull down files from a remote repository and add, commit, and push changes to files up to a remote repository.

Once the configuration is successful, you should see an empty GitHub window.

Now that we have our GitHub account connected to the Desktop Client, we'll use it to complete four critical processes that we'll use throughout the course:

1. Cloning a repository down to our local machine
2. Editing and creating new content in this repository
3. Synchronizing content between our local and remote repositories
4. Working with collaborators

We're hosting the content for each module of MAP 671 course on the New Maps Plus GitHub account within its repository. For your final project, you'll create a repository on your account and add files there.

Additional uses of Git

Git is an entire approach to distributed version control systems, and GitHub/GitHub desktop is one way to use this approach. You can view a list of numerous graphical user interface tools that use Git.

For example, you can download and use Git through the command line. This reference page can help with utilizing commands.

Please note you are not required to complete MAP 671 activities in command line. All activities are intended to be completed using the GitHub Desktop client interface. I mention the command line option and the larger world of Git tools in case this information is helpful for you.

Summary

You have reached the end of this file. You have accomplished the following tasks:

1. Installed GitHub Desktop on your computer

Hooray!!!

Please go back to the Modules on Canvas and move to the next activity.