Creating a Repository

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• Where does Git store information?

Objectives

• Create a local Git repository.

Once Git is configured, we can start using it.

Let’s create a new repository for our work. In this lesson we’re going to be adding additional information to the survey_data_clean.csv file we worked on in the “Data Organization” part of the workshop. Click “Create new repository”.

Then we give our repository a name - in this case survey_data.
We also choose the location to put the repository on our local computer. For this workshop it’s easier to put the repository on your desktop. It’s also good practice to check the README box, which will create a blank file where we can put information about our content. We’ll discuss Git ignore (which handles files you don’t want tracked) later in the workshop, and the License section is a discussion for another workshop.

If you look on your desktop you’ll see a new folder. This is your new repository, which is just like any other folder on your computer. However, it is also special because Git can now track versions of your files.

You’ll now see that GitHub Desktop shows the status of your repository. You haven’t added anything yet, so no changes show up.

Advanced tip

If you navigate to the survey_data directory on the command line and use ls -a flag to show everything, we can see that Git has created a hidden directory within survey_data called .git:

$ ls -a

.	..	.git

Git stores information about the project in this special sub-directory. If we ever delete it, we will lose the project’s history.

Places to Create Git Repositories

Try to create a new git repository inside of the survey_data repository you just created. Since you don’t have the welcome screen any more, you’ll need to go to File/New Repository.

What happens? Can you create the sub-repository? Why is it a bad idea to do this?

Solution

Git repositories can interfere with each other if they are “nested” in the directory of another: the outer repository will try to version-control the inner repository. Therefore, it’s best to create each new Git repository in a separate directory. GitHub Desktop is smart enough to block this operation, even if the repository wasn’t created in GitHub Desktop (that’s the suggestion in the yellow triangle- we’ve already added the repo so it doesn’t do anything).

Key Points

• Local repositories can be set up and track changes in files.