What is GitHub and How to Use It

GitHub is a web-based platform that hosts Git repositories, providing developers with tools for version control and collaboration. Whether you are working on a small personal project or a large enterprise application, GitHub can streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.

This article explains what GitHub is and how it works, covering its key features like version control, collaboration tools, and project management. It walks you through getting started with GitHub, creating and managing repositories, and performing tasks like branching, cloning, and forking. You’ll also learn about GitHub Actions for automation, labels for organization, and alternatives like GitLab or Jira. Finally, it touches on GitHub Copilot, an AI tool for coding, and wraps up with why GitHub is essential for developers. So let's start!

What is GitHub?

GitHub combines Git, a powerful version control system, with features that facilitate collaboration and project management.

Here are some key points to understand about GitHub:

1. Version Control: GitHub uses Git, a distributed version control system that tracks changes to your code. Git allows multiple developers to work on a project simultaneously without overwriting each other's changes. It keeps a history of all changes, making it easy to revert to previous versions if needed.
2. Collaboration: GitHub is designed for collaborative work. It allows multiple people to contribute to a project, review code, discuss issues, and merge changes efficiently. This makes it an ideal platform for open-source projects and team-based development.
3. Project Management: GitHub provides tools for managing your projects, such as issues, pull requests, and project boards. These features help you keep track of tasks, bugs, and enhancements, making it easier to manage your project's workflow.

Key Features of GitHub

• Repositories: A repository (or repo) is where your project lives. It contains all your project's files and the history of all changes made to those files. You can create a new repository on GitHub to start a new project or to host an existing one.
• Branching: Branches allow you to work on different versions of a project simultaneously. The main branch, often called "main" or "master," is the default branch. You can create new branches to develop features or fix bugs without affecting the main branch.
• Pull Requests: A pull request (PR) is a way to propose changes to a repository. When you create a pull request, you are requesting that someone review and merge your changes into the main branch. Pull requests are essential for code reviews and collaborative development.
• Issues: Issues are used to track tasks, enhancements, and bugs. You can assign issues to team members, add labels for categorization, and link issues to pull requests.
• Actions: GitHub Actions allow you to automate your workflows. You can set up CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) pipelines to test and deploy your code automatically.

Getting Started with GitHub

Step 1:  Go to the Website

Go to the GitHub website and click the Sign-up button.

Step 2: Enter the details

Step 3: Let GitHub know a little more about you

After entering the code, GitHub will ask a few questions to help in personalizing your account. Once you’re done answering those questions, choose which plan you would like to use. Here, we chose the Free Trial option.

Congratulations! Now you have created your very own GitHub account!

After creating your account you can add your name, along with social media links and add names. This is similar to customizing your profile on Instagram.

An alternate way is by downloading the Version Control System Git in your system. The steps for the installation of Git can be found here.

How to Use GitHub?

GitHub is a code hosting platform that can support multiple languages. Here, we’ll learn how to start with a few things, namely:

• Working with the GitHub Dashboard.
• Create, Update, and Delete Repositories.
• Perform different kinds of operations on files and repositories in GitHub.
• Clone Repositories.
• Fork Repositories.

Here’s how the GitHub dashboard looks like

The Dashboard in GitHub is where you can see all the repositories you’ve created on the left-hand side. The updates from GitHub are made known to the developers on the right-hand side.

You can also view what your followers or those who you follow on GitHub are up to in the “For You” section or also get some trending news, similar to the “Trending” tab on YouTube.

The “Following” tab has a similar functionality to view what the people you follow on GitHub are up to. 

Since GitHub is a hosting platform, users can use repositories as a folder to upload files.

What is a GitHub Repository?

It has similar functionalities to a folder in a System to store various projects in different folders. As we know, GitHub is a web-hosting platform for developers, hence to properly segregate and store code, they provide the developers with the ability to store files of their projects in such repositories in which they can edit, add and delete files. If the repository is public, other platform users can notify the repository owner of any bugs by utilizing Pull requests. 

1. Create and Update Repositories on GitHub

The most important use case of GitHub is its ability as a hosting platform to store files on its website. GitHub provides developers with the tools to Create Repositories, update repositories either by editing files, or adding/deleting files. All these operations are seen in detail below. 

1.1. Using the ‘+’ button in GitHub to create a Repository

Log into your account on the GitHub webpage. Then click the “+” button. This will bring a drop-down box with some options. Click the “New Repository” button.

After clicking the button, it will redirect you to another page where you need to fill in the description and the necessary information for your repository.

It can be optional whether you want to choose your repository to be viewed publicly, that is, anyone accessing GitHub can view your repository and its contents, or it can be private, which means only you can see and access your GitHub repository.

You can type anything in the Description and tick the box next to “Add a README file” and create your repository. Once the repository is created, you can see the first file pushed (added) in your repository is the README file.

1.2. What is a README file?

A README.md file is used by developers to write a short description describing their project, or in the case of Open Source Software, they start to write a detailed description to install or use their software.

The ‘md’ in the README.md file stands for the Markdown file similar to markup languages such as HTML (HyperText Markup Language). It is used to style the README file for including code, or other things.

The concept of the README file is explained more in detail here.

The process to customize and create a repository is explained more in detail here. Once you've created your repository, you can start adding files according to your projects. Let's see how we add files to our repositories. 

2. How to Add Files to Your Repository?

Again, there are three ways to add files to your repository. One is using Git Bash, then with Github webpage UI and the other uses the Git GUI. In this article, we’ll learn to add files to your repository using the GitHub webpage. 

Go into the repository and click “Add File”, which will open more options as shown below:

Here, you can either upload files present in your system or write your code in GitHub if you want to.

As seen above you have both the drag and drop and Push Requests option to be used to add or delete files in a repository.

3. How to Delete a GitHub Repository?

To delete a repository, navigate to the settings bar in the repository you want to delete.

Scroll down to the end where you will come across the “Danger Zone” and will be provided a list of options. Click “Delete Repository”.

This will bring a popup where GitHub will ask you to type the name of the repository to confirm its deletion.

Once you know how to do all of these, it is important to learn about the labels available in your GitHub repository.

4. Labels in GitHub

They are a way to provide tags for descriptive metadata available in your repository. The main functionality of Labels in GitHub is to organize push/pull requests, issues, and the different types of items available in a repository. It is also possible to create your custom label in GitHub. 

The available labels and their description can be seen by navigating to the “Issues” section and clicking “Labels” to see all available labels.

The process to create a custom GitHub label in GitHub is explained in detail here.

5. Operations in GitHub

These are common procedures that have been performed on files in GitHub repositories with varying use cases. These are used to provide platform users with the ability to change the contents of their repositories dynamically.

Some of the common operations in GitHub are:

• Creating pull and merge requests
• Creating a branch
• Cloning a repository
• Forking a repository

5.1. Pull Request or Merge Request

In GitHub, users can create a Pull Request to let the owner know that some changes have been done to their files in the repository. It can only be accepted by the owner to implement changes in their code. 

Once the Pull Request is accepted, the merge request will be performed. This is to approve the process where the changed file will be merged into the repository, committing changes to the main branch.

To know more about GitHub merge click here

Commands on Git Pull and Git Merge are shown below.

git pull origin
git merge origin/master

6. What are Branches?

The branches in GitHub allow you to experiment safely with your code. Branches provide a safe space for code experimentation and debugging processes. Branches always start from the "main" repository and branch out to sub-repositories to test specific parts of the code in different environments. This is done to not commit any changes in the main code, but if needed the branches can be committed to the root repository. 

You can add or delete branches to a repository in GitHub and it is very easy to do so. To create a branch, we need a base repository to do so.

The operations that can be done are merge commands, push commands, and pull requests.

6.1. How to create a branch?

Go to your repository and click on the “main” branch. This will create a drop-down where you can choose a name for your branch and create it.

After creating it, it can be viewed when you select “View all Branches”.

6.2. How to Delete a Branch?

To delete a branch, simply click the trash icon in the branch to delete it.

7. Cloning Repositories

GitHub offers many features such as cloning repositories. This is done to keep a copy of the repository on your desktop, and the changes you make in the Desktop files will also be reflected on the GitHub page.

7.1 How to Clone a Repository?

For the above example to clone repositories, go to the GitHub repository you’d like to clone. Go to the repository you want to clone, and click the “Code” button.

Copy the link, and to clone it, open Git Bash and type this code:

git clone <repository url>

This will clone the repository to your desktop where you can synchronize your changes on your desktop to the code on the GitHub page.

It can be found in your saved files as seen below

8. Forking a Repository

A fork is created when a new repository is created by copying a previously existing public repository to add your changes to it. These changes can be personal or you could submit a pull request to the owner of the original repository to apply these changes. 

Forking repositories are done for a few reasons:

A. Starting Point For an Idea: To create your idea for a project, you can fork an existing repository as a code base and then expand on the idea from the base code.

B. Correct Any Mistakes Present in the Project: When you notice any glaring errors or bugs in a public repository, one of the ways to effectively do it to people you do not have contact info with is:

• Fork the repository.
• Edit the code to remove any bugs.
• Submit a pull request to the owner to apply these changes.

Suppose you have created a repository for a project and uploaded it publicly. Another GitHub user who you may not know, may notice your profile and check it and may find some bugs. They can suggest some changes by forking your repository and applying the changes themselves then, submit a pull request to you. This is the difference between cloning and forking repositories.

8.1. How to fork a repository?

Go to the desired repository you’d like to fork and click the “Fork” button.

This will redirect you to another page where you can customize the Repository name and the description.

The “Copy to the master branch only” is to submit pull requests which may be incorporated by the repository owner and click “Create Fork”.

Now you have successfully Forked the repository.

Alternatives of GitHub For Developers

GitHub is one of the well-known VCS hosting platforms out there, but there are many more players providing services similar to GitHub in case you want to explore other alternatives. 

Some of the platforms are:

• GitLab
• Azure DevOps server
• Jenkins CircleCI
• Jira
• Assembla
• CloudBees

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is an AI integration by GitHub used to autocomplete codes for languages that it supports. GitHub copilot can be integrated with an IDE to generate code. It is not necessary to use a specific platform anymore. Currently, it is a paid subscription, but it is potent with the ability to generate code automatically with less than a few prompts.

It has been trained with a large number of codes available in the GitHub platform and uses Generative AI to generate its code.

Conclusion

GitHub is a powerful platform that enhances version control and collaboration for developers. By understanding its key features and how to use them, you can improve your workflow and collaborate more effectively with others. Whether you are working on a solo project or part of a team, GitHub provides the tools you need to manage your code and streamline development.