3.2 Installation

Helene Wagner

1. Goals

This section provides step-by-step video instructions how to install git and make it interact with RStudio and GitKraken.

  • Video tutorials walk you through a typical installation process. They assume that you have received an invitation to join a GitHub project, e.g., for a DGS Landscape Genetics group project.
  • Happy Git with R - this external tutorial is more general and can be very useful for trouble shooting during installation.
  • Joining your group’s project on GitHub is explained with screenshots in a brief tutorial (Google Doc).
  • Setting up a group project as a collaborative GitHub repo is explained in an external tutorial.

There are various ways to install git, and various ways to interact with it. While many tutorials available online rely heavily on git commands in the Terminal, here we avoid using the Terminal as far as reasonably possible (and when we use it, we demonstrate it in a video).

3. Happy Git with R

This excellent external resource explains the installation process and contains useful information for trouble-shooting:

Happy Git and Github for the useR

  • The videos below refer to numbered sections of this tutorial.
  • Refer to the tutorial if you run into issues with the installation, as not everything could be covered in the videos.

4. Video tutorials: installation

These videos show the installation process step-by-step, focusing on the most important numbered sections of the Happy Git with R tutorial listed above. If you run into problems, please consult the tutorial.

  1. Register GitHub account: 4 Register GitHub account
  2. Install Git and GitKraken: 6-8 Install Git and GitKraken
  3. Connect to GitHub with PAT: 9-11 Connect to GitHub with PAT

Embedded videos:

5. Joining your group’s project on GitHub

There are different ways to start a project in RStudio that uses GitHub for version control. Here we focus on the case where you have been invited to join an existing GitHub project. The following tutorial explains how to get a copy (clone) of your team’s GitHub project (repo = repository) into RStudio on your local computer.

In addition, the Happy Git with R tutorial provides instructions for a wider range of use cases:

6. Setting up a group repo

This is for the folks who want to start a project and invite others to it.

7. Next steps

Continue to the Workflows page.