Introduction to GitHub and GitHub Actions

Introduction to GitHub and GitHub Actions

Collaborations are rarely static: when people work on projects together, it is a continuously developing process of contributing ideas, giving and getting feedback, and addressing this feedback with changes until a goal is achieved. These steps often overlap, with collaborators simultaneously changing files in the project. This dynamic makes it very challenging (and very confusing!) to work on documents that are passed around the group, with versions of changes being tracked by updating file names with initials, dates or “document_final_version_number_23123”. This is where GitHub comes in!

In this workshop, we will demonstrate and discuss how GitHub - a common platform for version control and collaboration - can help to manage collaborations dynamically, with transparency and traceability. We will begin by briefly demonstrating how GitHub can be used to collect, address and track feedback and contributions to code and documents through issues and pull requests. We will then demonstrate and discuss GitHub Actions, which can automate workflows to build, test, and publish content in your repositories. We will review how to implement and troubleshoot actions that perform R code testing, Rmarkdown document rendering, and website publishing to ensure that all contributions are safely and continuously integrated into your project.

Workshop material

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