GitHub for Astronomers
Course Description
GitHub is a cloud-based platform to host Git repositories and is well suited to scientific programming and extensively used by the science community. GitHub allows you to store and manage files and track changes. It also includes project management and communication features that are useful when working on collaborative projects such as issues, forks, and milestone tracking.
MeerKAT scientific software is located in GitHub repositories for easy access and use. Scientists may need to interact with these Git repositories to get access to some MeerKAT user tools, MeerKAT data processing software as well as MeerKAT example usage notebooks.
This course is focused on getting the scientific user up and running using quick guides to help the user through the initial interaction with GitHub and setting up of Git.
It also provides reference documents in the supplementary Materials Tab aimed at providing quick reference guides for continuous Git interaction.
This short course consists of three (3) lessons presented as lecture slides and complemented by the user documentation in the Materials Tab.
Note to reader:
Who should follow this course:
- You want to download and use software or tools in a GitHub repository
- You want to update and collaborate with software development on a GitHub repository
Course Materials
Reference manuals for astronomers
- Git for Astronomers: Essential Guide (Click here to view)
- Git for Astronomers: User Guide (Click here to view)
- Git for Astronomers: Advance Use (Click here to view)
Additional reading
- GitHub help pages (https://help.github.com/)
- The Pro Git book, written by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub (https://git-scm.com/book/en/
v2)
Click to view summary table listing a typical Git command workflow