GitHub "central point of collaboration"

 GitHub

GitHub is the single largest host for Git repositories, and is the central point of collaboration for millions of developers and projects. A large percentage of all Git repositories are hosted on GitHub, and many open-source projects use it for Git hosting, issue tracking, code review, and other things. So while it’s not a direct part of the Git open source project, there’s a good chance that you’ll want or need to interact with GitHub at some point while using Git professionally. 

If you are not interested in using GitHub to host your own projects or to collaborate with other projects that are hosted on GitHub, you can safely skip to Git Tools.

Account Setup and Configuration The first thing you need to do is set up a free user account. Simply visit https://github.com, choose a user name that isn’t already taken, provide an email address and a password, and click the big green “Sign up for GitHub” button.

GitHub will send you an email to verify the address you provided, Clicking the Octocat logo at the top-left of the screen will take you to your dashboard page. You’re now ready to use GitHub.

SSH Access As of right now, you’re fully able to connect with Git repositories using the https:// protocol, authenticating with the username and password you just set up. However, to simply clone public projects, you don’t even need to sign up - the account we just created.

The GitHub Flow GitHub is designed around a particular collaboration workflow, centered on Pull Requests. This flow works whether you’re collaborating with a tightly-knit team in a single shared repository, or a globally-distributed company or network of strangers contributing to a project through dozens of forks. It is centered on the Topic Branches workflow covered in Git Branching. Here’s how it generally works: 

1. Fork the project. 

2. Create a topic branch from master. 

3. Make some commits to improve the project.

 4. Push this branch to your GitHub project. 

5. Open a Pull Request on GitHub.

 6. Discuss, and optionally continue committing. 

7. The project owner merges or closes the Pull Request. 

8. Sync the updated master back to your fork. 

This is basically the Integration Manager workflow covered in Integration-Manager Workflow, but instead of using email to communicate and review changes, teams use GitHub’s web based tools.