Github and Website Workshop/setup

From OpenHatch wiki

Welcome to the setup instructions for Github and Website Workshop!

Please complete the following steps on the laptop you will be using for the workshop. The estimated time to complete setup is under an hour.

It is strongly recommended to complete setup a few days before the workshop so that mentors can help you with any problems you encounter. However, if you aren't able to finish setup, you are still welcome at the workshop.

If you are having any technical difficulties, or have other questions, you can contact Evy Kassirer.

Goal #1: Get a Github account

(Estimated time: 5 minutes)

If you don't already have an account, go to github.com, enter a username, email, and password, and click "Sign up for GitHub"

Goal #2: Download git

(Estimated time: 10 minutes)

note: We strongly recommend you sign up for the Github Education Package - it comes with a bunch of really awesome FREE technology! You can sign up here: https://education.github.com/pack/join

Goal #3: Practice navigating the computer from a terminal

(Estimated time: 10 - 15 minutes)

Throughout this workshop, we'll be running git from the terminal, which means we'll want to be comfortable with navigating to those programs from the terminal prompt. In this section, we'll practice using these navigation commands.

Goal #4: Install a text-editor

(Estimated time: 5-10 minutes)

Text editors are helpful for colour-coding your code and providing useful shortcuts. We don't have anything like Dr. Racket for editing our code (note to engineers - this is the nice text editor used in our first year CS course). If you don't already have a preferred text editor, you will need to install one.

We recommend:

  • Windows: Notepad++
  • OSX: Sublime Text - this is also available for other platforms, but there's a message that pops up occasionally asking you to buy it which is why we recommended Notepad++ instead.
  • Linux: vim and emacs are popular but have a pretty big learning curves. If you're not familiar with them, gedit should come pre-installed so you're good!

Goal #5: Get a domain name!

(Estimated time: 5-10 minutes)

There are free domain names for students available at https://nc.me/

if you haven't already gotten a .me domain, find an available domain that you like and confirm your @uwaterloo.ca email to get it!