If you do not have access to a *nix system (e.g. OSX, Linux, BSD), we strongly recommend using Vagrant in conjunction with VirtualBox. If you are using OSX, you will need to install brew.

Note that if you're on Ubuntu Linux already and you want to try this Vagrant thing out, you're going to want to get the one from the website and not the one from apt-get, as it is out of date and not compatible with most images.

It is recommended that you try to type commands rather than copy paste; it's why you take notes in class: it helps you remember in the future. However, we always recommend copying URLs, like the repository, since they're so long and easy to type incorrectly.

These instructions may be unclear, or something weird might happen! If you post an issue, we will try to help over the internet. If you show up at a technical workshop, ask us for help and we are happy to sit with you! Mainly we want you to get started at home so you don't have to spend time downloading and installing things, but it's okay if you have trouble!

Download a copy of this repository, and start vagrant inside the extracted directory, using vagrant up.

Forking a repository is a github concept. While git itself has the notion of different repositories, it doesn't provide forking, accounts, logins, or a web page like github does. This means that if github ever crashed for a day or went out of business, you would still have all your data, but you'd need to upload it somewhere else to get the nice interface back. In a minute, we'll tell git that our new repository is a fork of this one after we clone it, or copy it to our computer.

Fork this repository, and clone your copy once you're inside vagrant. Note that the notation below: ${GITHUB_USER_NAME} is based on bash variable substitution. Basically, if your username is cswomenumass, then the url you need to clone is https://github.com/cswomenumass/tech-skills-bootcamp.git.

git clone https://github.com/${GITHUB_USER_NAME}/tech-skills-bootcamp.git 

Now go into the directory you just cloned the repository into:

cd tech-skills-bootcamp # go inside
git remote add upstream https://github.com/CSWomenUMass/tech-skills-bootcamp.git # tell git that it came from a fork!

You can now read these instructions from within your vagrant instance:

Open the file for editing with nano. If you're familiar with vim or emacs we've installed those for you, too. nano is very simple to use, though.

Add your CS or github username to the file; go ahead and make one up if you don't have one -- and don't delete anyone elses! Feel free to also record the date!

nano participants.md

Tell git, the version control system that you've changed the file, and that you're done making changes for this commit:

git add participants.md
git commit # save changes locally

At this point, git may complain that you haven't configured it -- within vagrant, that is:

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Now tell ``git`` you're done changing things for now, and push your changes up to your fork of the repository.

One of the best features of git is that it tries to walk you through why it is confused and how to fix it. That doesn't mean it always explains things very good, so ask if you get stuck.

If git doesn't complain, it will pop open nano and ask you to write a message describing your changes. Mine was This is so much fun :).

git push # send them up to the server
git pull upstream master # pull any changes from upstream CSWomenUMass/tech-skills-bootcamp

At this point, you may have to merge other people's changes. If you get stuck, ask for help! git attempts to walk you through the process, but sometimes this can get complicated, if it thinks you edited the same line as other people.

git push # if you merged

Now, submit your changes as a pull request on github. One of the instructors will accept your pull request, and you'll likely get an email notification about it.

You're done for now. Some UNIX/bash review slides are coming soon, so there'll be more refresher material to work through.

Here's a challenge: Write a unix command to print out the number of participants in that file. A good starting point is wc -l which will count the number of lines in the file, but that will include the title as well! Maybe grep can help. Recall that google and stackoverflow can be a good reference, but so is man grep. There's also going to be solutions using tail. awk, sed, bash, or even python2, but challenge yourself to learn a tool you're unfamiliar with.

There are solutions in the challenge-solutions.md file, but no peeking! If you come up with something new, add it in and explain what it does!

Don't forget to suspend your VM vagrant suspend or turn it off when you're done vagrant halt.