
The best resource I’ve found for understanding Git and GitHub comes from this 2016 talk ( slides here) by Alice Bartlett of the Financial Times (hat tip to Garrick Aden-Buie of RStudio for telling me about it). Git and GitHub have built-in tools that enable simultaneous asynchronous work, a major benefit for those working in teams. The problem they run into is that only one person can work on an RStudio project shared in this way. Many of the teams I train that are learning R decide to switch to Git/GitHub after collaborating using Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or the like. Using Git and GitHub makes it possible to work on the same project at the same time as collaborators.Instead of making copies of files over fear of losing work, version control allows you to see what you did in the past, all while keeping single versions of documents. Ever had documents called report-final.pdf, report-final-v2.pdf, and report-final-v3.pdf? Yes, yes, you have. Using Git and GitHub allows you to use version control.

#SET UP GIT CODE#
Because GitHub has a copy of all of the code you have locally, if anything were to happen to your computer, you’d still have access to your code.
#SET UP GIT SOFTWARE#
Git is open source software for version control.So … what are Git and GitHub? First of all, they are two separate things: I had a sense that they were about collaboration and sharing code, but beyond that … 🤷 I remember when I was starting out learning R, Git and GitHub were things I had heard about, but only vaguely understood. You will then be prompted to 'Enter a file in which to save the key.' You can specify a file location or press Enter to accept the default file location.

com' This command will create a new SSH key using the email as a label 2. Join me as I walk through everything you need to do in order to use Git and GitHub alongside RStudio.īut first, some background … What is Git? What is GitHub? execute the following to begin the key creation ssh-keygen -t rsa - b 4096 -C 'youremail example. But getting everything set up can be a challenge. Using Git and GitHub alongside RStudio has the power to revolutionize how you work in R.
