Version control

A demonstration of using version control software with Rstudio.

• Test git is working by typing git in the Terminal window. (Do you get a short 1-2 line error message or more than 30 lines of usage information?)
• Introduce yourself to git if you haven’t done this before by typing these lines in the Terminal window
  • git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  • git config --global user.name "Your Name"
• You need to get Rstudio and GitHub to communicate with each other. You need to create a GitHub personal access token (PAT) and tell R about it.
  • Make sure the packages usethis and gitcreds are installed. Type library(usethis) and library(gitcreds) to check. If you get an error install them using install.packages("usethis") and install.packages("gitcreds")
  • In the R console, type usethis::create_github_token(). This will open up a web browser. You will be asked to login and perhaps use two factor authentication. Enter a note to describe the token and pick an expiry date (I suggest a date shortly after the end of this course.) Make sure you have at least the following boxes checked: repo, user, workflow. Click the green generate token button at the bottom of the screen.
  • Copy the random numbers and letters that make up your token by clicking the two overlapping blue boxes (or highlight and select copy from the menu).
  • In the R console, type gitcreds::gitcreds_set(), enter, and then enter the PAT by pasting it into the console.
• Go to github web page: github.com
• Find your assignment repository
• Create a new project on your computer using Rstudio and this repository
• Edit a file
• Stage and commit the changes
• Push the changes to github
• See that the changes have appeared on the github website