What Is Git, GitHub And GitHub Desktop And Create A Git Repository In GitHub Using GitHub Desktop

Background

Software development is all about writing code and developing solutions following requirements and processes. Managing code becomes complex with time and multiple contributors. In the real scenario, multiple developers work on the same project and write code on a daily basis. Tracking changes and merging those codes are hassle and time-consuming without any proper tools or platforms. Another issue is rollback which is not possible without using any version control tools. When it comes to writing code, source code management is another important factor to consider. Source code management is not only just storing the code safely but also tracking the changes, resolving the conflicts, and merging from multiple contributors.

There are several tools and platforms available for source code management with exclusive features.

In this article, I will elaborate on GitHub, one of the most used, cloud based open-source communities to manage your source code plus extensive features with git repositories. In this article, I will cover the following points.

What is Git
What is GitHub
What is GitHub Desktop
Installation and Authentication of GitHub desktop
How to create a Git repository

The below points will be covered in the next article.

Add a new project to the repository
Add an existing project to the repository
Make and commit changes to the project

In this article, I will explain Git, GitHub, and GitHub desktop. Furthermore, I will be doing hands-on by creating a git repository using the GUI GitHub desktop.

What is Git

Git is a version control system for managing the source code which keeps the track of it with many options. Basically, it is a software to track the changes of files mostly used for coders to work collaboratively and source code management during the software development.

As per Git-SCM (https://git-scm.com/)

Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning-fast performance. It outclasses SCM tools like Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase with features like cheap local branching, convenient staging areas, and multiple workflows.

If you want to go in-depth about Git, please check the link below.

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

What is GitHub

In simple terms, GitHub is the single largest cloud-based hosting service for managing git repositories which offer a wide range of functionality for source code management and version control as well as its own features. The best thing about GitHub is that it is completely free. You can create private as well public repositories with GitHub without any cost with some conditions. It is widely used to host open-source projects. As of now, GitHub's free plan allows the creation of unlimited private repositories with unlimited collaborators, however, there is a restriction of Git Actions up to 2000 minutes for those private repositories per month.

Along with Git, GitHub provides its own features like bug tracking, task management, code review, continuous integration/continuous deployment, likewise other features which make this platform more useful and interactive professionally.

You can explore more on GitHub from this link: https://docs.github.com/en

What is GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is an application that enables GUI-based interaction with GitHub. Git provides a wide range of commands for Git activities like creating repositories, commits, pull requests, and so on. However, GitHub desktop provides GUI-based those activities using best practices with Git and GitHub. We can use GitHub desktop to do most of the Git commands with UI and clicks which makes collaboration and working with Git more flexible. You can connect to your account, create git repositories, add projects, do the changes, and commit easily with the interface. I will be doing hands-on with the GitHub desk in this article.

Know more about GitHub desktop.

GitHub Desktop is available for both Windows and macOS.

Link to download GitHub desktop.

Installation and Authentication of GitHub desktop

This is straightforward. We can download the setup file from the above link. We can install GitHub desktop in Windows 7 64 bit or later and macOS 10.10 r later.

Step 1

Download the package based on your OS. I will demonstrate with the Windows version.

Step 2

Double click the downloaded setup file and continue the setup.

Once the setup is completed, the GitHub desktop will launch.

You can authentication securely with your account and access the resources from the GitHub desktop.

Open GitHub Desktop.

Click File and Options as shown above.

This is how we can authenticate and connect with GitHub on the GitHub desktop.

How to Create a Git Repository in GitHub

In this section, we will create a new Git repository in GitHub using GitHub desktop.

Click File in GitHub desktop as portrayed.

We will get an option to create a new repository which is shown. Additionally, there are other options like adding a local repository, clone repository.

We will select New Repository.

Then we will get the following options for creating a Git repository.

We will enter the following data,

Name: Name of Git Repository. In my case name is Demo-GitHub

Description: We can small description of this repository as shown

Local Path: We need to choose a local path for this repository where the actual project will be stored locally.

Initialize this repository with a README: this is an option to add a readme file. I recommend adding this file for every project as we can have details of the project, changes, versions as so on.

Git ignore: This option will add ignore to this repository. You can choose the file type which you want to ignore as shown.

License: You can choose a license for this repository. I will be choosing the MIT license.

After entering those values, we will click create a repository.

Once you click the create repository, we will our GitHub desktop as shown.

We can observe the following things from the UI.

Current repository as Demo-GitHub
Current Branch – Main
Commit option
Publish your repository to GitHub.

We will initiate with publish repository by click on it as shown.

After clicking on the Publish repository, we will get the following options as depicted.

We will have an option to choose GitHub.com or Enterprise. Here, we are using a free one, GitHub.com. We will provide the following data.

Name: This will be the name of the Git repository in GitHub.com
Description
Keep this code private: A checkbox is to make this Git repository private or public. I will be keeping this repository public; therefore, I will uncheck this.

Once we click Publish repository, finally, the repository is created in GitHub as shown,

We have successfully created a Git repository in GitHub using GitHub desktop. This is how we create a Git repository in GitHub using GitHub desktop application without writing any command.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explained source code management and version control. I have also elucidated about Git which is a software for distributed version control, and GitHub which cloud-based hosting service for managing Git repositories. Furthermore, I have described GitHub desktop which is a GUI-based interaction with GitHub for Git Actions. Additionally, I have shown installation and authentication steps. Finally, I have created a Git repository in GitHub using GitHub desktop without any command. In the next article, I will do hands-on with how to add new or existing projects to the Git repository in GitHub using again with GitHub desktop.