Getting started with GIT and Github

By now you should have installed GIT on your computer and created a Github account. As a quick reminder here are the links:

Rmarkdown and Homework 01

We will also go through the Rmarkdown document and associated R code to get you started working with a dataset and running some statistics and making some plots with R code. See the files at the Github repository for Homework 2.

Create an R Project Linked to Github

  1. Open RStudio
  2. Click File/New Project
  3. Choose Version Control
  4. Choose GIT
  5. Go to YOUR Github repository for Homework 2, click “Clone or Download” and click the little icon to the right of the URL to copy the link to the clipboard
  6. Go back to RStudio and paste in the URL
  7. Make sure the “Project Directory Name” matches the name of the repository.
  8. Make sure you are creating the new project directory in the folder on your ocmputer you prefer.

Work on your homework - RStudio Project

Now you are working in your repository.

  1. Open the RMD file - this is the Rmarkdown file with text and code combined.
  2. To get help on Rmarkdown, click Help/Markdown Quick Reference. You can also get help online at https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/ and at https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/
  3. Follow the instructions for the homework to update your document and R code as needed.
  4. SAVE YOUR WORK. When you are finished “KNIT” your document by clicking on the little blue icon that looks like a ball of yarn, and choose “Knit to HTML” or “Knit to Word”. Once you have created these files you can then save the document as a PDF.
  5. OPTIONAL - if you want to “Knit to PDF” directly inside RStudio, you need to install a LaTeX compiler.
    • option 1 (recommended) - install the tinytex R package - click on Tools/Install Packages and type in tinytex. Follow the instructions at https://yihui.name/tinytex/ - after installing run these 2 lines of code in your console:
      • tinytex::install_tinytex() to make sure the package is installed and ready to go
      • tinytex::pdflatex('test.tex') - to test if a PDF document gets created
    • option 2 (for those that want to do more with LaTeX) - If you want to do more with LaTeX you’ll need a standalone program. Here are the download sites and installation options for Windows or Mac users:

Save and Submit your homework

  1. Make sure you save all your files in your homework repository
  2. Backup/Sync your files with your Github repository
  3. Click on Terminal tab (next to Console)
  4. Type in these GIT commands
    • git status to see your updated files
    • git add . to add all currently changed or new files
    • git commit -m "my message here" to commit your files, include an informative message about this commit
    • git push to move these changes up to the cloud to your Github repository
    • git status to check to make sure everything is ready to go
  5. SUBMIT your homework file(s) - usually a PDF document - to Canvas by the posted deadline

Copyright © Melinda Higgins, Ph.D.. All contents under (CC) BY-NC-SA license,CC-BY-NC-SA unless otherwise noted.

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