GitHub Workflow Tips for Beginners

Note: I have a series of posts about git. For an intermediate workshop, see git some help.

Overview

This guide is mainly written with my Code the Dream (CTD) mentoring students in mind, but many bootcamp students or new open source contributors can benefit from these tips. First, when I say "GitHub Workflow," I mean the typical lifecycle of changes whereby an individual contributor gets their code into a git repository:

1. Make a local clone of the repo
2. Make a feature branch
3. Make a GitHub pull request, where you're requesting to merge your feature commits with the main branch of the repository
4. Code review occurs in the pull request
5. Your code is merged 🎉

Note that this is the workflow at CTD is a bit different than your typical open source workflow. Specifically, CTD students are branching from their own remote repository, and simply applying self-imposed discipline to not commit to the main branch, as a way of rehearsing the way that the process works in most companies.

Meanwhile in open-source repos, you cannot generally create a branch on the real project repository. Instead, you make a branch of your own remote copy of the project repo, then request to pull your changes into the upstream repository from your remote repository. This is a more complex setup, and not how it generally works at companies, which also why CTD does not teach this workflow! However, if you are a CTD student and you've ever accidentally made a pull request to merge your code into the CTD official clone of the node_express_course, this is why! GitHub is optimized for the open source contributing workflow, where your personal fork is the "landing zone" for changes ultimately bound for the repository you forked from. If you click the default "create PR" button, it will target CTD by default!

Common Mistakes

OK, so what are these common mistakes we're going to address?

• Making a PR against the wrong repo
• Too many commits on a PR
• Commits include node_modules or other stuff we don't want

Mistake 1: PR is Targeting the Wrong Repo

Let's say it loud for those in the back:

And if you can't something's gone wrong!

For an example "bad" pull request, check out my own; #79. Technically, nothing is wrong here -- my intention is to actually contribute to code the dream, not to merge this code into the main branch of my own repository. But if you did this, it would be a mistake. You want your pull requests to target your own main branch!

You cannot change this PR to target the correct branch. You will need to close this PR and create a new one. First, let's create a new one; you can jump to the "week N" branch on your local repository by clicking on the blue chip on from the bad PR:

Next, you'll find yourself on the page for your branch. This is the branch you made with your changes (typically "week2" or similar). It looks like this, and you should click contribute -> "Open Pull Request" to go onto the next step:

Finally, we come upon the page where you done goofed the first time. There are 4 dropdowns, and you originally made a mistake by accepting the default value in the first one. By default, it'll prompt you to make a PR against Code The Dream's upstream repository, but you want to click that left-most dropdown, and change it to be your own repository!

That's it! Click "create PR," and you'll have a healthy PR. Don't forget to tell your reviewer where to look, and to close the PR you accidentally made against the Code the Dream repo!

Too Many Commits on a PR

WIP - will revisit!

Commits Include Stuff we Don't Want

WIP - will revisit!