ITEC325 git usage

git usage
hw04

Due Mar.01 (Mon) 23:59~~at start of class~~; also see part II, below

This assignment gives the class experience in using git, and updating a shared repository. For this assignment, you must use the command-line interface to git, rather than a gui interface (e.g. via github.com's web interface).

Create a github.com account. You can use whatever name you like, but you must make sure that you your github account is also associated with your RU email (@radford.edu).

Locally (on your machine, or on rucs), be sure to configure your name and email, as per git-on-rucs.html; in particular git config --global user.email yourUserName@radford.edu (so that when your local computer makes requests to github.com, it knows whose password it should be asking for).

Once a github account has been created, I will send an invitation granting write-access to the repository freemanbach/itec325 (sent 2021-Feb-22 ).

Locally (on your machine, and/or on rucs), clone this (public) repository:
git clone https://github.com/freemanbach/itec325.git.

I suggest doing this somewhere within your H: drive’s dynamic_php/… (mounting your H: drive if on your laptop), so you can view the results via the web. However, that isn’t required (e.g. if your disc quota is low).

Alternately, you can clone via ssh ¹ by git clone git@github.com:freemanbach/itec325.git You just need to generate a public/private key pair first (by running ssh-keygen). You'll have the private key stored locally (in ~/.ssh/id_rsa), and you'll give github.com a copy of the public key (http://github.com » your avatar » github Settings » SSH keys » Add). The project itself has a couple files re-going-over these same instructions for creating ssh keys and adding ssh keys to github.

Debugging: You can test whether your public-key-on-github is working independently of git by testing ssh -T hg@github.com (yes, include the “hg” literally); if it shows “logged in as yourUserName” then your public-key is all set. If it shows “Permission denied (publickey)” (or something else), then you need to double-check that the private-key on your machine corresponds to the public-key you have listed in your github profile » preferences.

Edit facts.txt, along with some two-facts-and-a-lie about yourself. (Note: this file will be public on my github account!)
Follow the existing format (each fact starts with username, colon, etc.). As always, grammar/spelling counts.

Add a small picture to the project, using git add. Update picts.php so that it includes a clickable thumbnail of that page. (A picture of anything polite, and you must have the right to copy it.)

Make sure your picts.php works correctly!

If you cloned this repo somewhere into your H: drive’s dynamic_php already, then you can view it as expected.
If you didn't do that before, you can push your changes to the canonical repo (see next step) and then cd to your dynamic_php/… and then clone another copy, and view it.
If you don't want to place this .php file in your dynamic_php/… to view it, you can just run php picts.php >! picts.html, and then open that HTML file from your browser.
Note that the provided repo already includes .gitignore mentionig facts.html, so you can generate that filename and it won't be added to the repository (which is the desired behavior, since it's a file generated via a program).

Commit your changes to your local repo, with a short (≤ 1 sentence) message saying what you did. You can use “git commit .”, which will cause an editor to launch for you to write the commit-message in. Alternately, you can run “git status .” (to be sure you recall all the files you changed), followed by “git commit -m "your message" .” to commit all changes to the current directory, ..

Warning: If you commit and get a warning about a conflict, be sure to resolve it before (re)committing. You'll get no credit if you commit something which includes the conflict.

Push your changes back to the public repository.

Hint: If you get an error about “not authorized” for writing to the repository, it may be because you didn't respond to github.com's invitation link in step 3 above. (The repo is world-readable — so just because you could clone it doesn't mean you also have write permission.)

Note: in the following days, I'll have each person make a change to the file, and then I'll be asking a D2L question based on your classmates' updated version.

Common mistakes:

Using github’s GUI buttons, rather than command-line tools. The buttons don't make it entirely clear what you're doing, and using them often leads to the problems below.
Make sure you clone (and later, push back to) the central repo, freemanbach/itec325.git.

In particular, some people (using the GUI interface) clone the central repo to their own github account, creating github.com/theirUserName/itec325.git, and then clone that one to their own machine. Later, when they push from their laptop back, they're pushing to their duplicated version hosted on github, and not the one me nor anybody else in the class ² is using.
Be sure to push to the repo — not “issue a pull request”. That latter is an email sent to me (the repo owner), letting me review the changes before I pull them in. It’s intended for (say) the public to contribute to open-source projects but making sure a project-member reviews the changes before adding them to the repo.

Since you all have write-permission on the project, there is no need to issue pull-requests — you should just push directly to the repo.

Part II

due 2020.Mar.05 (Fri.) at start of class; only complete this after the the part I deadline above.
(5pts) Go back to your entry in facts.txt, and:

after each of your three statements, add either “False” or “True” (and any explanation you might care to provide);
Following your three statements and comments, add a line “[previous update by username]”, where username is the person who made the most previous change to the file (besides you). (For example, if just updated my own facts, the next student to complete this will have “[previous update by ibarland]”.)
hint: git log

You must, of course, push your changes back to the central repo, or else I won't see them!

¹ Isn't it odd, that your username is not included in the clone-request? Apparently the ssh crypto-exchange being sent embeds your public key?, which github can look up and see which github-user has that public-key on file (presumably using a hash table). ↩

² And to sustain the confusion: you might see a classmate’s old work in your parallel github copy of the repo, just because it was already present at the moment you made your initial clone. ↩

This page licensed CC-BY 4.0 Ian Barland
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git usage hw04

Part II

git usage
hw04