The GitHub: By Shyamraj K S

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a web-based free repository hosting service, which offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality. It provides both command line interface as well as a graphical user interface to use the commands of Git. It can also be integrated with desktop and mobile environments. It also has in built collaborative features like wiki services, task management tool, bug tracking tool and feature request tool for every project hosted in GitHub

Why to use GitHub?

Developers who wish to maintain their project source code in a source code management system [versioning system] but cannot setup their own, can avail GitHub services, which is offered free from GitHub. It becomes essential to maintain versions of individual developers code when multiple developers are working on a same source branch or sometimes even same source file, so that individual changes can be tracked and reverted if the need arise. One can also check-out a particular version of the code by tracking the changes through the version numbers and their respective commit messages easily.

When to use GitHub?

Since the GitHub services are offered free online and also it has open read access to the public, developers may have to judge if they would like to share their code with public, especially if they are working as freelancers on a customer project which may have proprietary IP [Intellectual property] and source code is copyrighted and protected by the customer.

Who is it for?

GitHub is ideal for students at any level who would like to explore and study a technology in an collaborative environment by exchanging the code and ideas in an open like minded community. Security is not of primary concern here. Apart from students, researchers are also benefitted in this collaborative environment as they get to interact with industry experts on various technologies and are able to establish professional connection with them. They can also become contributors to the community there by giving back to the open source community

Where can I find?

GitHub public repository can be found at: https://github.com/

What can I do with it?

GitHub is mostly used for code, but is also sometimes used for non-code types of files like Final Cut or Word documents. GitHub is not solely for programmers: in their educational videos, GitHub states that any "knowledge worker" (defined as almost any professional who makes use of a computer) can benefit.
In addition to source code, GitHub supports the following formats and features:

• 3D renderer files, which can be previewed using a new integrated STL file viewer, which displays the files on a 3D canvas. The viewer is powered by WebGL and Three.js.
• Photoshop's native PSD format can be previewed and compared to previous versions of the same file.
• Nested task-lists
• Documentation and wikis
• Small websites can be hosted from public repositories on GitHub. The URL format is http://projectname.github.io.
• Issue tracking (including feature requests)
• Visualization of ngeospatial data
• Gantt charts

How to setup GitHub?

A user must create an account in order to contribute content to the site, but public repositories can be browsed and downloaded by anyone. With a registered user account, users are able to discuss, manage, create repositories, submit contributions to others' repositories, and review changes to code.

Extra Info:

GitHub offers both paid plans for private repositories and free accounts, which are usually used to host open-sourcesoftware projects. As of 2014, GitHub reports having over 3.4 million users and with 16.7 million repositories making it the largest code host in the world.

Projects on GitHub can be accessed and manipulated using the standard git command-line interface and all of the standard git commands work with it. GitHub also allows registered and non-registered users to browse public repositories on the site. Multiple desktop clients and git plugins have also been created by GitHub and other third parties, which integrate with the platform.

The software that runs GitHub was written using Ruby on Rails and Erlang by GitHub Inc. developers Chris Wanstrath,PJ Hyett, and Tom Preston-Werner.

GitHub launched a new program to give students free access to their tools on 7 October 2014. It is called the GitHub Student Developer Pack

BootStrap<< Previous
Next >> Software Engineering

Our aim is to provide information to the knowledge