Git, GitHub, and Version Control
Version Control: How you keep track of coding projects or other computer-based projects over time.
You’re about to start a big, weeks long coding project that you’ll be working on a few days a week most of that time.
At some point you’ll be writing and uploading your code and you’ll break something and it will stop working.
No matter how good you get at programming this will never stop happening, you’ll just get better at handling it.
The entire world now runs on software* and computers/hardware. *software = code that’s finished and made into a product people can buy or otherwise obtain.
Currently when you do a lab you just have your code saved as a single file on your hard drive.
So now, if you accidentally delete all or some of your code, or your computer stops working, there might be no way for you to get it back.
Backup horror stories that actually happened
Pixar accidentally deletes Toy Story 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dhp_20j0Ys
Q: What would be an easy way to do version control for a big project like your Digital Electronics Lab final project? A: Make a copy of your code file or files into a new folder with the date (and time if necessary) after every time you work on it, and continually store those files and folders onto the cloud - Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
Dropbox File Version History
Q: Is this how software or digital electronics companies keeps track of the important code/ software they write? A: No.* *Well, hopefully not.
Q:What do they do? What should you do? A: Use version control software that’s been designed specifically to solve all these problems, and can be used just as well for both individual programmers, small groups, and big software/tech/ digital electronics companies. Virtually everyone doing programming projects uses time tested version control software.
Short answer: Use existing version control software.
Better answer: Use the most popular version control system Git which will easily let you store backups on your hard drive and do some other useful things.
Actual, best answer: Use Github, a free version control program and website that allows you to… 1) store endless versions of your code/ programs/files on your computer, 2) effortlessly back everything up on the cloud, 3) effortlessly share your code projects, and their entire history, with anyone with an internet connection, and 4) (way more advanced) collaborate on coding projects with others, publicly or privately.
Github www.github.com intense example: https://github.com/arduino/ Arduino simple example: https://github.com/schacon/ blink
Version Control History First version control software: “ SCCS” - aka “Source Code Control System” - created at Bell Labs in the early 70s. Worked only on Unix and only with specific code files. The saved files could only be accessed by the person who created them.
Version Control History Various similar systems improving on SCCS but similar were released over the next decade until… CVS - aka Concurrent Version System - in 1986. Same idea as SCCS but files/ coding projects could be stored on a centralized server on a local network (at an office or university or where ever) and accessed and worked on and updated by multiple users at once .
Version Control History Then… subversion - in 2000. Allowed storage of any type of file(!!!) . So if you or your team were working on a circuit schematic in EagleCad, or artwork in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, you could continually save your current version and revert back to old versions as necessary.
Version Control History Then… Git and GitHub - in 2005. Developed by Linux creator Linus Torvalds after BitKeeper, the version control system he’d been using stopped offering a free version. Now everyone uses Git and Github. There’s some other thing called mercurial and some people still use subversion but I have not met a person using either or any other version control since the late 00s.
GitHub terminology repository or repo - an individual GitHub project. commit (noun) - a record of a locally saved version of your project commit (verb) - to save a record the current version of your code push - to upload a commit to GitHub so its saved offsite on the cloud on www.github.com.
GitHub tutorial: http://bit.ly/2i2zdlV
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