A Brief Introduction to Version Control

Improve your Laboratory

Think of the computer as a physicist would his laboratory–you may use it to check your existing ideas about the construction of the world, or as a tool for discovering new phenomena which then demand new ideas for their explanation.

• Tristan Needham in Visual Complex Analysis

It is my belief that version control will vastly improve the reach and efficiency of your laboratory. This page serves as a companion to a talk I am organizing to introduce version control. If you are new to version control I have compiled here my favorite resources and repositories. While I am not an expert in any of the mentioned tools I do recognize that they have provided tremendous value to my work and hope you find the same.

Before the Talk

• Make sure you have git running on your laptop. see instructions
• Brush up on how to use the command line. Here

Attend the Talk

Measuring Stick

• Watch this tutorial ^{Start either at beginning or 15 minutes based on audience comfort}.
• If the command line interface is not for you, try GitKraken: GitKraken Website
• $watch -n 0.1 --color "git log --all --decorate --graph --color --abbrev-commit --pretty=short"

After Talk

1. Look through the cool GitHub projects mentioned below.
2. Read Chapter 1-3 and 7 of Pro Git.
3. Write code and collaborate
4. Watch intermediate tutorial

Cool GitHub Projects to Look At

• Oceananigans.jl
• Openpilot
• NeuralPDE.jl
• Chebfun
• SUNDIALS
• Trixi.jl
• Awesome GitHub Repositories

Reference Resources

1. Use the command: $git <command of interest> --help.
2. Pro Git.
3. How to collaborate
4. Resolve merge conflicts

Other Topics of Interest and GitHub Tools

• github Gist Example
• git rebase -i
• tig
• git reflog
• gh CLI
• cherry-picking

Hot takes

• Windows Is aweful
• Stop using Matlab!!
• Vim is king
• Make less code comments