Collaborate

Working with a partner, we will practice collaborating with others. I have created a repo for this activity on GitHub.

1 Fork the IntroToGit_Activity repo

Working on one computer, navigate to the repo created for this activity and fork the repo. The person whose computer you are working on will be “partner 1” for the remainder of this activity.

2 Add a collaborator

Add your partner as a collaborator to the forked repo using their GitHub username.

3 Clone the Repo

Now each working on your own, follow the steps to clone the repo to your machine.

4 Explore the Code

In the new project, open script.R in RStudio. Ensure you are working with the most up-to-date version by pulling any changes before diving into the code.

You’ll note that the code is to create a horribly colored plot of Sepal.Length vs Sepal.Width data from iris dataset. It may also look familiar from our discussion of merge conflicts.

# Load Iris dataset and ggplot2
library(datasets)
library(ggplot2)
data("iris")

#Partner 1: 

#Partner 2: 

# Plot
plot <- ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, y = Sepal.Width, color = Species)) +
  geom_point(size = 2) +
  geom_smooth() +
  xlab("Sepal Length") +
  ylab("Sepal Width") +
  scale_color_manual(values = c("tan", "wheat", "burlywood2")) +
  theme_bw()
  
plot
`geom_smooth()` using method = 'loess' and formula = 'y ~ x'

5 Modify the code

5.1 Without a conflict…

  1. Edit different parts of the code than your partner:

    • Partner 1 - Add your name or a comment to line 6 (# Partner 1:)

    • Partner 2 - Add your name or a comment to line 8 (# Partner 2:)

  2. Now that both of you have edited your file, partner 1 should stage, commit, and push their changes to GitHub.
  3. Have partner two pull the new changes. What happens?
  4. Resolve the error message (see the step-by-step if you need help) and try pushing your changes again. Was it successful? What does the message mean?

5.2 With a conflict…

Now that we have successfully experienced the joys of an automatic merge, we will force a conflict. You may have noticed that the color palette for this figure could be better.

  1. Without consulting with your partner, choose a new color palette for this figure by changing the names in scale_color_manual() and save the changes.

    Bookdown.org

  2. Have one partner stage, commit, and push their changes first.

  3. Once the changes have been pushed to GitHub, have the other partner try pulling the changes. Was it successful?

  4. If you got an error message (you should have) read any follow the hints given to you.

    Based on the error, we should commit the change and pull again. This will create a merge conflict.

  5. Work with your partner to resolve any merge conflicts, commit the resolved version, and push the changes.

    Remember, you will need to either select one of the versions or combine them and remove all conflict markers from the code.

5.3 Switch

Switching which partner pushes the changes first. If you feel daring, try editing more of the code. Resolving merge conflicts takes practice.

If you find yourself needing to reset a merge commit, use $ git reset HEAD^