This workshop is part of the Westgrid advanced computing workshop series.

Git is a version control tool: it allows to keep a record of files history. Not only is this a much cleaner method than keeping (often messy) collections of files versions, it also makes navigating this history and identifying the changes between versions particularly easy. Using online remotes (for instance through online repository hosting services such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket) unleashes Git's full potential by providing:

• an online backup of projects history
• a powerful system to collaborate on projects
• an easy way to make your open-source projects available to the community (and conversely, an easy way to contribute to others' open-source projects)

In this workshop, we will go over the full workflow of creating a project, hosting it on GitHub, and collaborating on it. We will also learn how to contribute to someone else's project by opening issues and submitting pull requests.

Prerequisites:

While this workshop is open to everyone, it is most suitable to people with a basic knowledge of Git.
Please bring a laptop with wifi access and Git installed (https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git). It would be best if you could also sign up for a free GitHub account before coming to the workshop (https://github.com/join?plan=free&source=pricing-card-free).

About the presenter:

Prior to entering the realm of computing, Marie-Helene Burle spent 15 years roaming the globe from the High Arctic to uninhabited Sub-Antarctic islands or desert tropical atolls, conducting bird and mammal research (she calls those her "years running after penguins"). As a PhD candidate in behavioural and evolutionary biology at Simon Fraser University, she "fell" into Emacs, R, and Linux. This turned Marie into an advocate for open source tools and improved computing literacy for all, as well as better coding practices and more reproducible workflows in science. She started to contribute to the open source community, became a Software and Data Carpentry Instructor, and worked at the SFU Research Commons providing programming support to researchers. She is thrilled to be continuing in this direction with HPC and new languages at WestGrid. When not behind a computer, Marie loves reading history books and looking for powder in the British Columbia backcountry on skis.