pwd - print working directory

pwd shows the directory or “folder” you are currently in.

pwd

/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test

ls - list files

ls shows the files in the current working directory. This is equivalent to looking at the files in your Finder/Explorer/File Manager. Use ls -a to also list hidden files, such as .Rhistory and .git. Here we look at all the files in current working directory:

ls

00-data-download.R
01-setup-file.R
02-do-something.R
03-make-some-figures.R
04-report.Rmd

mkdir - make a directory

mkdir creates a new directory (or folder) in the current working directory.

If we wanted to add a directory (folder) in that path, we could do so like:

mkdir my-folder
ls

00-data-download.R
01-setup-file.R
02-do-something.R
03-make-some-figures.R
04-report.Rmd
my-folder

Notably we see our my-folder directory!

cd - change directory

cd allows you to navigate through directories by changing working directory. There are many ways to navigate:

pwd # start here
cd my-folder
pwd # end here

/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test
/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test/my-folder

pwd
cd ..
pwd

/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test
/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities

pwd
cd ~
pwd

/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test
/Users/mikejohnson

pwd
cd /Users/mikejohnson/github/spds
pwd

/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds/activities/geog13-test
/Users/mikejohnson/github/spds

Create a file

On a MacOS or Linux machine (anything running Bash) touch can be used to create a new file with a defined name and extension in the working directory. For example, we can create a new R file in our working directory as follows:

touch new-r-file.R
ls

00-data-download.R
01-setup-file.R
02-do-something.R
03-make-some-figures.R
04-report.Rmd
my-folder
new-r-file.R

On a Windows machine (anything running Powershell) $null > can be used to create a new file with a defined name and extension in the working directory. Essentially, this is piping no data (null) into a new file. For example, we can create a new R file in our working directory as follows:

$null > new-r-file.R

clear - clear your terminal window

clear

Step 1. See if git is already installed

In your terminal, type the following (note: PC USERS type where git) and hit Enter.

If git is installed, it will return a path like below.

which git

/usr/bin/git

You may be prompted to install git automatically – do it! If you are not automatically prompted to install, continue to Step 2 to install manually.

If you have git installed, or it automatically installed, consider yourself fortunate and move to section 3. Otherwise…

Step 2: Manually install git

You should only have to do this if git was NOT found in Step 1 !!!

xcode-select --install

Step 3: Check the version

Once you have git installed, you can also type git --version (then press Enter) to see the version of git you have. Like this:

git --version

git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-128)

Note for Windows Users

Git Bash is an application for Windows environments which provides an emulation layer for a Git command line experience. Bash (or zsh) is default shell on Linux and macOS. Git Bash is a package that installs Bash, some common bash utilities, and Git on a Windows operating system. TO use bash in R Studio, you can change the setting in your profile by going to RStudio -> Preferences -> Terminal

If you change these settings, then you will be able to use the “Mac” commands above like touch.

Your GitHub

• Go to GitHub to register an account.
• Choose your user.name and email wisely! Your user.name will appear on all websites we build, and will eventually become a “long-form” business card to advertise your work online.
• Both your email and user.name will be used in the next steps so make sure to remember them
• Fill in your profile information including email, location, ect and change your profile image
  • The image does NOT have to be a personal picture but should not remain the pixelated Github Avatar.

Finding Open Source code

GitHub is full of open source code that you can use, borrow, find, ect. To find your first repository search for mikejohnson51/spds. This should take you to the repository for this course!

In the upper right hand corner you see three options:

1. watch: will notify you via email when changes to the repo are made
2. star: this will place the repo in your “stared” repositories making it easy to find latter
3. fork: this makes a copy of the current repo in your account that you can modify and build on.

Watching a repo can be nice, but for a class like this - which is updated every day - the notifications will be a lot.

For now, please star spds so that you can easily find it and I will have easy access to your accounts (you can always “unstar” after the course).

We will deal with forking repositories on Thursday.

Telling Git who we are

Now you have Git locally and you have a Github account that you’ve used to find published projects. Lets connect them…

The first thing we need to do is tell git who we are. Git comes with a tool called git config that lets us set the configuration variables that control how Git looks and operates.

In the RStudio Terminal, enter the following, where YOUR NAME is what you want git to know you by (this can be your user.name or real name)

git config --global user.name 'YOUR NAME'

So what did we just do? We used the terminal to tell git (a local program) to set a global configuration variable, called user.name, to a specified value. Next, tell git the email associated with your GitHub account in the same way …

git config --global user.email 'Your Email Here'

When you are done, you can list your global configuration variables:

git config --list --global

filter.lfs.clean=git-lfs clean -- %f
filter.lfs.smudge=git-lfs smudge -- %f
filter.lfs.process=git-lfs filter-process
filter.lfs.required=true
user.name=mike
user.email=jmj00@ucsb.edu
credential.helper=osxkeychain
color.status=auto
color.branch=auto
color.interactive=auto
color.diff=auto

So long as your user.name and user.email are consistent with your entries you are doing great 👍!

GitHub’s local home

Ok the last thing! This is a matter of convenience rather the necessity but we will create a local directory on our computers to house all git-enabled projects.

To do this, create a folder called github in the home directory of your computer. We can quickly do this by changing to our home directory (cd) and making a new folder (mkdir) called github:

cd ~
mkdir github

END