Summary and Setup

Introduction to git and GitHub for technicians

Welcome to this material providing a very brief introduction to git and GitHub, aimed at technicians. This online lesson content has been prepared using the The Carpentries Workbench.

ByteSized Training Format

This session follows the ByteSized short-format technical training structure developed for sessions run under the UNIVERSE-HPC project.

The general structure of the session is as follows:

  • Part 1: Introductory presentation

    The instructor will run through a short lecture-style presentation with some core background material and details of the session aims.

  • Part 2: Interactive tutorial

    An interactive tutorial that will give you some hands-on experience of the material introduced in the introductory talk.

  • Part 3: Q&A / discussion

    While the session is intended to be quite interactive and we encourage participants to ask questions during parts 1 and 2 of the session, this final part provides some dedicated time for discussion and the opportunity for participants to ask questions about more advanced aspects of the topic or advice relating to specific use cases that they have.

Prerequisites / setup information

As noted in the information sent out prior to the session, you need some tools installed on your computer in order to participate in the interactive tutorial element of the session.

The details provided are as follows:

Terminal and git

  1. You will need access to a terminal (sometimes called a shell) and git on your computer.

    If you are using Windows:

    • Install “git for windows” which will provide both git and a terminal (the Git Bash application).


    If you are using Linux or Mac:

    • A terminal is available by default and git may also be installed. If it’s not, see the git installation instructions for help.


    How to check if git is installed and available on your computer:

    • Open a terminal window:

    • For macOS users, open Terminal.app from your Applications folder.

    • For Windows users, if you’ve installed git for windows, open the “Git Bash” application.

    • (if you’ve never used a terminal before, you can exit it by simply typing “exit” - without the quotes – and pressing Enter/Return)

    • Run the command git --version at the terminal prompt (without the quotes).

    • If you see something like git version 2.51.1 (the version number on your system may well be different), then you’re ready to go!

    • If you see something like git: Command not found., then git has not been successfully installed.

GitHub.com Account

  1. Sign up for a GitHub account if you don’t already have one:

    Go to https://github.com and click sign up at the top right of the page.

    One you’ve created an account, you will have a basic, free GitHub account which will work fine for the purposes of this session.

    Many universities/research organisations have a GitHub subscription and an associated institutional “GitHub organisation” that you can join. Check relevant institutional web pages or perhaps ask a colleague whether your organisation has its own GitHub organisation. Institutional GitHub organisations are often linked to a GitHub Enterprise account that may offer additional features and functionality.