17  Project Management Using GitHub + Informative READMEs

Learning Objectives

  • Utilize GitHub’s project management tools to organize and manage projects
  • Practice creating issues in GitHub
  • Craft informative READMEs for Git repositories
Acknowledgements

We’ll be utilizing the LTER Scientific Computing Team’s Collaborative Coding with GitHub Project Management lessons.

Exercises are adapted from Ben Best’s EDS 211: Team Science, Collaborative Analysis and Project Management Course for the Bren School’s Master of Environmental Data Science program.

17.1 Exercise: GitHub Organization, Project, and Issues

Step 0: In your group, designate who will be the Owner of the organization.

Question 1

Owner creates a new GitHub Organization for the group.

Steps
  • Step 1: Click profile icon in the top right corner and in the drop down menu click “Your organizations”
  • Step 2: Click “New organization”
  • Step 3: Click “Create a free organization”
  • Step 4: Come up with an Organization account name. Need inspiration? Check out Rafael Triantafillidis’s Repository Name Generator
  • Step 5: Owner enters their GitHub email in the Contact email field
  • Step 6: Under “This organization belongs to:”, Select “My personal account”
  • Step 7: Verify your account, Accept the Terms of Service, and click Next
  • Step 8: Owner add group members as organization members
  • Step 9: Owner sets organization members’ permissions to admin persmissions
Question 2

Add repositories the organization.

Steps
  • Step 1: Navigate to the repository
  • Step 2: Go to the “Settings” tab of the repository
  • Step 3: Scroll to the bottom to the “Danger Zone”
  • Step 4: Click “Transfer” to transfer the ownership of the repository to the organization created in Question 1
  • Step 5: Under “Select one of my organizations”, Select the name of the organization created in Question 1
  • Step 6: Type to the username/repo_name to confirm and then click “I understand, transfer this repository”
Question 3

Create and test GitHub Issues features.

In the repository, click on the Issues tab and then click “New issue”.

In the new issue, add the title as “Testing Github Issue features”.

Then copy and paste the following into the “Leave a comment” section:

## Github Issue Basics
- [x] Create an issue
- [x] Create this task list in initial comment of issue
- [ ] Convert the following two tasks into issues:
  - [ ] Assign user
  - [ ] Add new label
- [ ] Add emoji reaction to a comment

## Github Flavored Markdown in Issue Comments
- [ ] Paste a screenshot into a comment
- [ ] Reference lines of code with a canonical URL
- [ ] Add a fenced R code block
- [ ] Mention a Github user on your team
- [ ] Use emoji in a comment

## Reference Issues
- [ ] Mention in issue comment another issue that is in the same repo
- [ ] Mention in issue comment another issue that is in a different repo
- [ ] Mention in `git commit` message an issue in the same repo

Finally, click “Submit new issue”. Then complete the tasks.

Question 4

Create a GitHub Project and add Issues to the project.

17.2 Exercise: Create Your Profile README

A Profile README on GitHub is a special README file that is added to your GitHub Profile that highlights information about yourself to share with others.

Profile README Examples

Steps to create your Profile README

  • Step 1: In the upper-right corner of any page, use the “+” drop-down menu, and select “New repository”
  • Step 2: Under “Repository name”, type a repository name that matches your GitHub username exactly
  • Step 3: Optionally, in the “Description” field, type a description of your repository. For example, “My personal repository”
  • Step 4: Select Public
  • Step 5: Select Initialize this repository with a README
  • Step 6: Click Create repository
  • Step 7: Above the right sidebar, click Edit README.
Create a Profile Picture Using an Octocat