Basics of Git-Hub

Most people now are days are not using the remote repository a local one. Instead they are using the online repositories for storing their code. If the application is an Open source one , keeping the code available online can make developers download the code and make the changes freely. Git Hub is one such thing.

GitHub is a Web-based Git repository hosting service. It offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features. As of now GitHub is largest online storage space of collaborative works that exists in the world.

Github provides access control and several collaboration features such as wikis , task management and bug tracking and features requested by projects

In general terms,

Git = local (on your computer ) , Github – remote (web and online)

Some of the other advantages of GitHub are

1. Share your repositories with others.
2. Access other user's repositories.
3. Store remote copies of your repositories (github servers) as backup of your local copies.

Some of the terms that we need to understand while using GitHub are,

Forking - “Forking” is when you create a new project based off of another project that already exists. This allows other people and developers to use the existing code and extend the features. If you find a project on GitHub that you’d like to contribute to, you can fork the repo, make the changes you’d like, and release the revised project as a new repo. If the original repository that you forked to create your new project gets updated, you can easily add those updates to your current fork.

Pull – So you made a fork of the project and now want to make a revision of the project. You can do this by using the pull requests from the original one.

Social networking - The social networking aspect of GitHub is probably its most powerful feature, and is what allows projects to grow more than anything else. Each user on GitHub has their own profile, which can act like a resume of sorts, showing your past work and contributions to other projects via pull requests.

Changelogs - When multiple people are collaborating on a project, it’s really hard to keep track of who changed what, and to keep track of the revisions that took place. GitHub takes care of this problem by keeping track of all the changes that have been pushed to the repository.

These are the basics of Git-Hub. More to Come . Happy learning