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Putting your repo on GitHub/GitLab

You've now gotten to the point where you can work quite well on your own. Writing changes, staging them, and committing from time to time. But what good is working all on your own? And wouldn't it be nice having a backup of your repository just in case? This is where remotes come in, online locations where you can store your repository.

VSCode

If you followed the last chapter in setting up a Git repository you are now presented with a new button in the source control menu once all changes have been commited. It will say Publish Branch. If you press this you'll most likely be prompted to sign into GitHub. If you haven't done so already, this is the point where you'll be forced to set up two factor authentication as well. If you want to use GitLab instead, we suggest creating the repository on GitLab first and then cloning it, unless you want to use the termnial which we will cover under cloning

Once this is all done, upon pressing Publish Branch again, the command palette will get a small dropdown asking if you want to publish to a GitHub private repository or a GitHub public repository. For all of your school projects you must use private, and for something like this we suggest doing so as well. If you now sign into GitHub you'll be able to see your repo there!

An important note on public vs private repositories

Make sure that repos you use for lab assignments and projects are private. Having solutions for these publicly available is considered cheating.

Terminal

To push your repository to a remote via the terminal, you'll first need to create a repository on your chosen remote service. Unlike VSCode, which integrates with GitHub directly, using the terminal is platform-agnostic, it works the same way for GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and others. For this example, we'll use GitHub. Head to GitHub and create a new repository. Give it a name, set it to private, and click Create repository. Once you're on the repository page, GitHub will show you how to either create a new repository locally or push an existing one. We'll choose the latter. Now, run the following commands in your terminal:

git remote add origin git@github.com:{YourUser}/{YourRepo}.git

Here, "origin" is the name you are assigning to your remote. Unless you have a specific reason to use another name, stick with origin as it is the default.

git branch -M main

This renames your current branch to main. The -M flag forces the rename if a branch named main already exists.

git push -u origin main

This command pushes your local commits to the remote and sets the upstream branch, which tells Git where your remote main branch is located.

Syncing

Now that you have a remote and a local repository a problem arises. How do we sync between the two? Git uses a system where you push and pull changes between your local and remote repositories. Whenever you want to add changes from your local to the remote, you push these changes. Similarly, whenever you have some changes in the remote that you wish to have in your local repository, you pull these changes in.

In VSCode there are several ways to do this. The easiest is using the command palette. In command mode (!kbd[!ctrl+Shift+p]) you can write git pull and git push respectively. Funnily enough this is exactly how you do it in the terminal as well! You might get a warning when you try to use git push that says the remote contains work you don't have locally. We'll go through what this all means in the next sub-chapter about merge conflicts.

Back in VSCode, if you really want to synchronize using your mouse the controls are a little more hidden away. In the left source control bar you can press on the three small dots next to "Changes". There you will find buttons for push and pull. You can also find them next to the dropdown called "Graph" further down, where they have custom icons. Them being so out of the way is another reason for why we highly recommend learning keyboard shortcuts. It can easily get tedious to switch between using your mouse and your keyboard.

The big sync button does't do just one of these actions, but rather both at once. There isn't really a parallel for this in the terminal except for git pull && git push.

Try adding a commit to your example repository and push this commit to your remote. If you then go to your remote repository, you should see your new commit there!

You can also create a so called README in your git repo if you'd like. A README.md file is a text file which can be displayed on a remote right under your files. This makes it valuable for documentation or information about your project.

Cloning

Now a big reason for having a remote repository is to be able to share your code with a collaborator or lab partner. Our recommended way is for all collaborators to clone the remote repo. When you clone a repo, it is automatically set up to have the proper remote.

VSCode

If you want to clone a repository from GitHub in VSCode you can either search for git clone in the command palette, or if you don't have folder opened in VSCode and go to the source control menu you will be presented with the option to clone a repository. Here you can either search for a public repository or paste in a SSH "link" to a private repository. To find this "link" go to the repository in GitHub or GitLab and press the button labeled Code. It's colored in both so it's easy to spot. Here you get a small dropdown and can select SSH.

Terminal

In the same way as above, go to your remote and find the SSH link. Then in your terminal write

git clone git@github.com:<YourUser>/<YourRepo>.git

This creates a new folder in your working directory for the repository, and puts all of the contents of it there.