Intro to GitHub
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This will cover:
- signing up for a GitHub account,
- "Watch"-ing a GitHub project,
- beginning a new discussion thread on a GitHub project, and
- commenting on an existing discussion thread on the web and via email.
Signing up for a GitHub account
Visit https://github.com and fill out the signup form. Pick a "handle" (all lower case, avoid hyphens) and use your government email address.
You will be taken to a plan selection page -- just click the "Finish sign up" button to stick with the free plan.
"Watch"-ing a GitHub project
When you "Watch" a project on GitHub, you will receive email notifications for every new discussion or comment that appears in the project.
Visit https://github.com/18f/foia. The top of the page should show the name of the organization ("18F"), the name of the project ("foia"), and three buttons on the right: "Watch", "Star", and "Fork".
Click the "Watch" button, and then from the dropdown that appears, click "Watching".
Starting a new discussion
Visit https://github.com/18f/foia/issues to visit the list of open discussion threads.
(You can also get there by visiting https://github.com/18f/foia and clicking the "Issues" link on the righthand side.)
To open an issue, click the "New issue" button. This will take you to a form to create a new issue. Like an email, you will need to give it a title, and a body.
Click "Submit new issue" to create the discussion thread. This will send an email to all people who are "Watch"-ing the repository.
Commenting on an existing discussion
From the web: visit the issue you wish to comment on, and scroll to the bottom of the discussion. You can enter your comment in the empty form at the bottom of the discussion thread.
From your email: you can also respond to a discussion from your email inbox, by replying as you normally would. (The screenshot below shows Gmail, but you can reply to a discussion from Microsoft Outlook, or any other email program.)
I hope that's helpful in getting started with GitHub!
This was actually not meant to be filed as a real issue - I was just using it to generate image links! I'm deleting here, and recreating separately.