Lab Activity: Forking

In this lab, we will be simulating the experience of contributing to an open source project on GitHub using the Forking Workflow. Recall from the previous lab that Branching requires "read-write" access a central, server-side repository on GitHub. Forking is a method of collaboration that allows anyone to contribute to an open source project without read-write permissions to a GitHub repository.

A "Fork" is a copy of a server-side Git repository (i.e. on GitHub) on another user's account. This allows the original repository owner to maintain their project without granting repository permissions to anyone else, while also giving users a copy of a project that they can manage on GitHub on their own. The benefit to open source communities is that data can be pushed and pulled between Forks through Pull Requests.

By the end of this lab, you will have experience with the following:

• Forking a repository from GitHub
• Cloning a forked repository to your computer
• Making commits to your forked repository
• Creating pull requests from your forked repository
• Linking specific Github Issues to pull requests

This particular simulation is for contributing to a recipe website. Your task will be to contribute a recipe to the website so that the entire class can have new recipe to experiment with in their own kitchen! While I am exciting to read the recipe you will be contributing, you will not be graded on the quality or sophistication of the recipe!

By completing this lab, you will have a copy of all of the code and files required for a Jekyll website using the Chowdown theme. You do not need to have Jekyll installed on your machine to complete this lab. You just need the ability to add files to the repository, edit them in VS Code (or your preferred plain text editor), and push commits to GitHub.

Prerequisites

• Have a recipe in mind, specifically a title, list of ingredients, and steps to make it. It can be anything you want.
• Have an image of the finished dish. You can contribute your own photo, or search Creative Commons for a generic photo of the dish that is licensed for re-use.

Getting Started

1. Fork this repository to your GitHub account: Click on the Fork button near the top-right of this page. This will create a copy of the repository to your GitHub account. At the end of the process, you should be at the GitHub version of your forked repository. The URL will look something like this: https://github.com/USERNAME/forking

2. Clone your new forked repository to your computer [help guide], something like: git clone [email protected]:USERNAME/forking.git

3. Open the repository in your text editor (e.g. VS Code)

Writing a Recipe

To complete this assignment, you only need to add two files. The first file will be a recipe file within the _recipes subfolder; the second file will be an image file (.png | .jpg | .gif) added to the images subfilder. Here's how:

4. Create a new markdown file within the _recipes directory named after your dish. Use Kebab case for the file name. and .md as the file extension. For example, a recipe for Banana Bread would be banana-bread.md. It's very important that this file is save to the _recipes directory.

Recipes are written in Markdown and contain a few special sections:

• The frontmatter, which contains:
  • Title, Image, and Layout (which is "recipe")
  • Ingredients (a list of things in the dish)
  • Directions (a list of steps for the dish)
• Body content (for intros, stories, written detail, credits)

You can an example on the Red Berry Tart recipe.

• example Markdown
• example recipe page

Or you can see the example in the _recipes/bagels.md file (you can copy the contents of the file to your new file and swap out the content with your recipe information).

5. Save the file when you're finished writing the recipe.

Adding an Image

For this part, you can use your default file explorer to copy your image to the repository. On your computer, the repository will be in a folder called forking.

6. Save the image file (.jpg, .png, or .gif) to the /images folder of the repository. Make sure that the image file name and extension matches the value for the image filed in your corresponding markdown file. For example, if you're adding an image file called bagels.jpg to the /images folder, the bagels.md markdown file for the recipe should also include the line image: bagels.jpg near the top of the file.

Git Workflow

7. Open your terminal in VS Code (File menu > Terminal > New Terminal) or terminal program (e.g. Git Bash).

8. Run git status to make sure that Git is aware that you've created two new untracked files: a markdown file (.md) and an image file.

9. Commit the files to your repository: git commit -am "adds a new recipe"

Note: you are not making a new branch for this commit. You are committing directly to the main branch of your Fork of the forking repository.

10. Push the commit to your Fork on GitHub: git push

11. Now, when you visit your Fork on Github, you will notice that your repository is one commit ahead of https://github.com/chrisdaaz/forking. GitHub will be aware of this and will ask you if you'd like to Compare and Pull Request.

12. Create a Pull Request from your forked version of forking to my original version of forking on GitHub [help guide].

Contributions to projects through pull requests are usually linked to Issues in the target repository. GitHub provides ticketing system (called "Issues") in every repository. This helps repository contributors keep track of work that needs to get done on the repository. Please reference Issue #1 in the Description of your Pull Request.

13. In the Title field of the Pull Request, enter the name of your recipe. In the Description of your recipe, reference the GitHub Issue number in order to link your contribution to the requested work in the Issue tracker [here's a help guide on linking pull requests to issues].

TITLE: Buffalo Chicken Recipe
DESCRIPTION: references #1

14. When you're ready, click on Create Pull Request. This will notify me that your work is complete. If the recipe looks good, I'll add it to the book and you will see it available here:

You're done!