6.S063 Design for the Web: Languages and User Interfaces

Version Control with Git

Git is a version control system used for tracking changes in source code during software development. Git is designed for coordinating work among multiple developers but it also enables powerful workflows on personal projects. When using Git you can keep track of why changes were made to your code, revert your entire project or individual files back to previous states, develop multiple features in parallel on separate branches and much more.

There are many different clients you can use to interface with git. There is a command line interface as well as many third party guis. In this class we will be teaching students how to use Github Desktop, but any git client should be sufficient for the course.

Github Desktop

Installation

We recommend downloading Github Desktop from https://desktop.github.com/. If you already use a package manager you can install using choco install github-desktop or brew cask install github.

Getting Started

  1. Sign in to github.com with your personal github account. Do not sign in to github enterprise server.

Sign in to Github.com

  1. Configure git with your name and the email address you have associated with your github account. The email address does not have to be your MIT email.

configure git

  1. If this is your first time using git we recommend following the getting started with github desktop tutorial. Please let us know if you have trouble with any of the steps.

For an overview of common tasks and how to do them with github desktop checkout contributing to projects tutorial.

Essential Workflow

Tips

  1. Commit early and often.
  1. Don't be afraid to branch when experimenting

Github Student Developer Pack

We highly recommend signing up for the Github Student Developer Pack. The pack offers free access to a wide variety of developer-tools .

Sign up Instructions

Helpful Git Resources