Week 3: File Management

Assignment: Version Tracking in GitHub (Due Week 4)

Due This Week: Problem Set 3

Lecture: File Management and Version Control

💾 Slides on the Course Drive

Readings & Reference Material

• Happy Git with R
• The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Science, ch 2
• Bryan, Jennifer. “Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about version control?”
• Wickham, Hadley. “Tidy Data”.
• Kuriwaki, Shiro. “Git for Students in the Social Sciences: A Pitch”

Computer Work

If you do not have one already, create a GitHub account and link your computer. There are two ways:

Simple (Recommended)

1. Register a GitHub Account.
2. Install the GitHub Desktop Client. (This client comes with git built-in, so that you do not have to install git separately.)
3. Sign in to GitHub Desktop with your GitHub account.
4. (Optional) Start an initial repo.¹ We will do this together in workshop this week, as well, but you can get a head start if you like.

Complex (only if you are already familiar with git)

1. Register a GitHub Account.
2. Install Git.²
3. Install your chosen Git Client or use the command line, Positron, or RStudio directly.
4. Link your client with your GitHub account. (You’ll likely need a Personal Access Token—see Happy Git.)
5. (Optional) Start an initial repo. We will do this together in workshop this week, as well, but you can get a head start if you like.

Once you have an account and a client installed, the third self-paced workshop walks you through creating a repository and pushing and pulling your first changes — do it before you start Assignment 4.

Due Next Week: Problem Set 4

Footnotes

1. Jargon alert: repo is short for “repository”.

2. Note: this step is optional if you use the GitHub Desktop Client (see simple steps); if you use any other client, you will typically need to install Git at the command line.