Many of the R projects I start don’t pan out and end up in a scrap directory somewhere, but once in awhile I make enough progress to get worried that I’ll lose track of it. That’s when I know it’s time to get it up on GitHub. This post is mostly just a way for me to remember how to get an existing R project on GitHub. I’m sure there are better ways of doing this in the command line, but I’m still pretty new to Git so I’m sticking with what I know works. Perhaps I’ll add a command line version later.
This is loosely based on the combination of this and this tutorial.
Step 1: create a GitHub repository
Easy. Go to your github account and click the button to create a new repo. I typically do not initialize with the .gitignore, readme.md, or license.md files, but add them myself manually after the project is up and running.
Step 2: enable git in Rstudio
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Open your project in Rstudio and navigate to Tools -> Version Control -> Project Setup
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Click SVN/Git tab and select git as the version control system. It will ask you to initialize a new git repo and restart Rstudio
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After Rstudio reopens, confirm that there is a Git tab in the environment pane (which for me, and I think by default, is in the upper right of the IDE)
Step 3: synchronize with the github repo
Open a terminal and do the following:
# move to the project directory
cd Projects/website
# initiate the upstream tracking of the project on the GitHub repo
git remote add origin https://github.com/hansenjohnson/website.git
# pull all files from the GitHub repo (typically just readme, license, gitignore)
git pull origin master
# set up GitHub repo to track changes on local machine
git push -u origin master
Step 4: push files to GitHub
Click the Git tab in Rstudio, and then click Commit. This will open a window where you can stage files to be tracked (and synced on GitHub). Select all the files you would like to track, write a commit message, then click push. This will send all changes to the GitHub repo.
Step 5: up and running
All you need to do now is remember to commit changes and push them to the GitHub repo. Don’t forget!
Extra: removing a tracked directory
I inevitably track a folder that I’d prefer to keep off of GitHub. That directory, hypothetically called /public for this example, can be easily removed using:
git rm -r --cached public
Then commit the changes, push, and you’re all done!