What is GitHub? It sounds like a home for Gits, whatever that is…. Git is an open-source version control system that was created by Linus Torvalds. Git allows developers to edit and update things that they build. They can incorporate changes in code in a precise manner, continually.
Version control systems keep revisions organized and stored in a central repository. This makes it easy to collaborate. Developers can download their code of choice, make changes, and then upload the newest revision. Also, every developer can see these new changes, download them, and contribute as well.
Git is a command-line tool and GitHub is where developers store their projects. The location where all the files for an individual project are stored is called a repo or repository. You can access the project files via a unique URL.
Have you heard of “forking”? Forking is when you make a copy of a project. So there may be a project that you see that looks interesting to you and you want to contribute to it and make a new project. This feature encourages developers to contribute and expand other developers projects, in turn progressing the coding universe. So, find a project on GitHub, fork the repo, make your changes, and release the revised project as a new repo to share with the world.
Once, you’ve made your clever changes, you can show the original authers and they can decide whether or not to accept and publish your changes into the original project.This is called a pull request. This is your chance to stamp your name on the project. Creating a pull request also allows you to communicate with the project owner. These revisions are public and therefore people can discuss and add their advice and opinions. GitHub also takes care of keeping track of all the changes that have been pushed to the repository.
GitHub provides a social networking aspect as well. You can set up a profile and anyone can see what you’ve been working on and your contributions.
Let’s get to work.
1) Copy a Repository to Your local machine with git clone.
Use git clone to copy a remote repository from the internet to your local machine.
2) Select the Repository of Choice.
Once you found what you want to copy, on GitHub, click the green “Clone or download” button.
Click the “Copy to clipboard” button to copy the URL.
3) In the terminal, run the git clone command with your copied URL
git clone cool-github-repo-url
This will create a local copy of the GitHub repository on our own machine. Happy cloning.