GitHub basics

GitHub is far more than just a code repository. It is used for numerous projects and has a much wider functionality.

Perhaps most brilliantly, you can set up your own website on it: details; including using the blogging and management system Jekyll.

In terms of software development, the website includes functionality for setting up Wikis associated with the software, and for issue tracking. Login to your area on GitHub to see these options.

Another major function you might be interested in as Geographers, is the amazing option to map GeoJSON files and keep track of changes in them over time. You can even turn them into publicly editable mapping systems.

You can find out much more about rendering and editing different types of files on GitHub at this collection of help pages.

Finally, it is worth saying that uploading a single directory of files to GitHub, while relatively clear for pullers, isn't especially usual. Most repositories contain a much more complex set of directories and subdirectories. The classic example of this would be an Eclipse project directory.

Eclipse has a plugin ("EGit") for working with Git, and you can find out more about this on this information page (not just for GitHub) and this tutorial. However, you can use GitHub for Windows as we have above to deal with Eclipse files, and if you just want to upload to GitHub (rather than doing merges etc. or working off another site), this is far easier. Just drag the Eclipse project directory into GitHub for Windows to set it up as a repository. GitHub for Windows rather kindly sets up its .gitignore to ignore all the Eclipse-based files, and just uploads the source (this is one of the many lovely things about the GitHub software; you'd usually have to write the .gitignore yourself). Of course, if you want to upload more you can just edit out bits of the the .gitignore "Eclipse" section.

If you pull down new code or revert using GitHub for Windows while Eclipse is open, you just need to refresh the screen (File --> Refresh, or F5) to see the changes.

That's it. For more GitHub tutorials, see this useful list.