12 Creating a repository on GitHub
12.1 Learning objectives
The learning objectives of this session are to:
- Navigate to commonly used sections on GitHub, like repositories, notifications, and the list of issues.
- Create new repositories on GitHub.
- Navigate a repository’s landing page (the “Code” tab) on GitHub to view files and folders, and locate the Issues and history areas.
12.2 GitHub’s landing page
During this section, visually show and walk through the different parts of the landing page. You don’t need to go into the pages just yet though.
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of what Git and GitHub are, let’s do some practical activities on GitHub. First, we’ll start by looking at GitHub’s landing page. This is the page you see when you first log in to GitHub. It shows you a summary of what’s happening in your GitHub account as well as quick links to common items. For this workshop, we will only focus on these items:
- Top repositories list and search bar at the top of the left sidebar. Since you are new to GitHub, you likely won’t have any (or only a few) repositories listed here. When you start to work with more repositories, this is a quick way to access them.
- Create new… button on the navigation bar on the top right that looks like: . This is where you can create a new repository, as well as other items we won’t cover in this workshop.
- Issues button on the navigation bar on the top right that looks like:
. This is where you can view all issues you’ve made, participate in, or have been assigned to. From our experience, we don’t use this item often, but it can be useful to quickly find or search for issues related to your work. - Notifications inbox button on navigation bar on the top right that looks like:
. This is where you can see all notifications about activities in your repositories, like when someone comments on an issue you made or mentions you in an issue.
We’ll return to these items later in the workshop, but for now, it’s enough for you to know where they are. Let’s go to the next section and create a new repository 🚀
12.3 Creating a new repository
Take it slow here as you create the repository since this is the first “type-along” of the workshop. Make sure to explain each option and what it does, using the table below as a guide.
Also briefly introduce Markdown and mention the .md file extension.
Now that we’ve gone over the landing page of GitHub and taken a look at some commonly used areas of GitHub, let’s create a new repository on GitHub. This is where we will store all the files and folders for the project we will be working on in this workshop.
For this workshop, we’ll create a repository for a recipe project that will contain files with recipes 😋 🍰 🍕 🍲
- Click on the Create new… button on the top right side of the navigation bar.
- Click on the New repository option in the dropdown menu.
- A new page will open up that now shows a list of options to check and text boxes to fill in. Table 12.1 describes what each option is and what to set it as for this workshop.
| Option | Description | Workshop Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Repository owner | This is the account you are creating the repository under. If you are part of an organisation, you can also create new repositories there. | Leave it as your own personal account. |
| Repository name | This is the name of the repository or project. | Name it recipes. |
| Description | This is a short description of what the repository is for and what it will contain. | Write “This is a practice repository for an introductory GitHub workshop. It includes a few recipes.”. |
| Public or Private | This is whether the repository is visible to everyone (public) or only to you and people you give access to (private). | Leave it as public. |
| Add a README file | This is a file that is shown on the landing page of the repository. It is a good place to put information about the repository. When checked, it will say something about “set main as default branch”. You can safely ignore this message. | Make sure it is checked. |
| Add .gitignore | This is a file that tells Git to ignore certain files or folders. | Leave it unchecked. |
| Choose a license | This is a file that tells others how they can use the files in the repository. | Leave it unchecked. |
It’s now time to click the Create repository button at the bottom of the page. After you click the button, you’ll be taken to the landing page of the repository. This is where you can see all the files and folders that are currently in this repository.
In this new repository there is only one file: README.md. The README.md file is a common file included in repositories to describe what the repository contains and is used for.
The files that have the file extension .md (like this README.md file) are Markdown files. Markdown is a plain text file format (a type of file, like Word’s .docx) that’s designed to be easy to write and read. Markdown files are commonly used to write text documents. We won’t cover how to write Markdown in this workshop, we’ll only use them.
We will start to add and modify files in the repository in the next session.
12.4 A repository’s landing page
Walk through the different parts, explaining as you go.
After creating a new repository, we’re taken to the repository’s landing page. This is where we can see all the files and folders in the repository. On the top navigation bar, there are several items, but only two that we will focus on in this workshop:
- The <> Code tab: This is where we can see all the files and folders in the repository. This is the default tab that is shown when you go to a repository.
- The Issues tab: This is where we can see all the issues related to the repository.
In the files and folders area, you’ll see a “table” style layout with a “header” that contains the most recent “commit” (we’ll cover that later) with a “commit” icon on the right-hand side that links to the history (that we will also cover later). This view has “columns” for files or folders, the commit message relevant to changes made in that particular file or folder, and the time when that change was made. Below this file and folder area is a display of the README.md file that was automatically created when we created the repository. GitHub will always by default display the contents of a README.md file at the bottom of this page if one exists.
Even though the repository landing page includes other sections, we won’t cover them in this workshop. The sections we’ve mentioned here are the most important and commonly used items.
12.5 🧑💻 Exercise: Create another repository
Time: ~3 minutes.
To practice making repositories, create another one on your own:
- Go through the same steps as before to create a new repository.
- Name the repository something like “learning-github”.
- Test out other settings, such as setting the repository to “private” and adding a
.gitignorefile.
12.6 Summary
- GitHub’s landing page as well as its navigation bar has several quick links to commonly used areas of GitHub (such as the “Create new” button, notifications inbox and issues)
- Create a new repository by clicking the Create new… button on the top right side of the navigation bar.
- A repository’s landing page shows all the files and folders in the repository as well as a display of the
README.mdfile if one exists.