Instead of making copies of files over fear of losing work, version control allows you to see what you did in the past, all while keeping single versions of documents. Ever had documents called report-final.pdf, report-final-v2.pdf, and report-final-v3.pdf? Yes, yes, you have.

Using Git and GitHub allows you to use version control.

Because GitHub has a copy of all of the code you have locally, if anything were to happen to your computer, you’d still have access to your code.

Using Git and GitHub serves as a backup.I have seen three major motivations for people to adopt a Git/GitHub workflow: Being able to have a record of all of the changes you’ve ever made to your code both locally and on a remote website is powerful. It’s possible to use Git without using GitHub, though most people combine the two. GitHub is the most popular service (others include GitLab and BitBucket) for collaborating on code using Git.Using Git, you can do things like see all previous versions of code you’ve ever created in a project. Git is open source software for version control.

So … what are Git and GitHub? First of all, they are two separate things: I had a sense that they were about collaboration and sharing code, but beyond that … 🤷 I remember when I was starting out learning R, Git and GitHub were things I had heard about, but only vaguely understood. Join me as I walk through everything you need to do in order to use Git and GitHub alongside RStudio.īut first, some background … What is Git? What is GitHub? But getting everything set up can be a challenge. Using Git and GitHub alongside RStudio has the power to revolutionize how you work in R.

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