Chapter 5 Exercise: Working with someone else’s repo

For this exercise, you are going to use forking, commits, and pull requests to edit somebody else’s repo. That somebody else is us - You will be editing this repo. Follow the instructions below to walk through this process.

5.1 About Markdown

The ‘code’ in this repository is actually “markdown”, which is code that is translated to formatted prose. Markdown is a very easy format to learn, very widely used, and we used it for this book. Github has it’s own ‘flavor’ of markdown (GFM). This cheatsheet gives a brief introduction to Markdown. For this exercise, please review how to create links using [] and ().

5.2 Instructions

Link to the GitHub repository: https://github.com/IBEEM-MSU/ibeem-collaborative-coding

Note: Feel free to work on your own or in small groups for this exercise.

  1. Choose from the following options:
  • Identify a public repository on GitHub that falls into one of the three categories we discussed (package, project, reference).
    • Note: We’re especially looking for some more Python-based examples/repositories!
  • Identify a resource (website, tutorial, youtube video, etc.) that you find useful that relates to the content of this class.
  1. Create a fork of the repository used to create the “book” for this class (IBEEM-MSU/ibeem-collaborative-coding)
  • Bonus: If you’re feeling adventurous and want to work like a true programmer, create a branch off of your forked repository and commit the changes below to that branch before submitting the pull request from your branch to the “main” branch of our repo. If this makes no sense, just pretend you didn’t read this bullet for now.
  1. Edit the text of the 08-resources.rmd file to add in your repository/resource.
  • Note: You can edit the text directly in GitHub (Click the pencil-shaped “Edit this File” button in the upper right hand corner after you click on the file name.) or you can clone a copy down to your computer to edit in your preferred integrated development environment (VS Code, RStudio, etc.).
  1. Create a descriptive commit message describing your change (and push to remote if working from a cloned repository).
  2. Navigate back to the main page for the original repo and create a pull request.
  3. Click the link to compare across forks at the top of the pull request.
  4. Write a pull request that references your commit (use your commit hash to do so) and submit.
  5. Pat yourself on the back for doing our job for us by generating resources/examples for future workshops!
[Artwork by \@allison_horst](https://twitter.com/allison_horst)

Figure 5.1: Artwork by @allison_horst