E16: Experience local portfolio management

Note: This is due by 9am on the start of Monday’s class.

Up to now, (most of you) have been managing your professional portfolio by editing the files in your portfolio repository on GitHub using a browser, or by using the TechFolio Designer app.

Now that you know git, you can make a clone of your GitHub professional portfolio repository on your laptop. Then you can edit, create, and delete files on your laptop and “push” those changes to your GitHub repository when you’re ready.

For the work we will do in this class, you will find that the GitHub Desktop application is even more simple than the command line.

Let’s get started:

  1. Review the GitHub Desktop Documentation.
  2. Download and install GitHub Desktop.
  3. If you haven’t already, watch the screencast on GitHub Desktop.
  4. Bring up your professional portfolio page in your browser.
  5. Click on the green “Clone or Download” button on the right side, then click on “Open in Desktop”. This will clone your professional portfolio to your laptop and set up GitHub Desktop to manage the files. I suggest that you make a new local directory called “github” on your laptop, and then clone your repo into that directory. You will be cloning many more repos over the course of the semester and you will find it convenient to keep them under a single directory.
  6. Use an editor (such as Eclipse or Emacs (not Word!)) to make some improvements to your portfolio. You can correct the spelling of current essays, or add a paragraph, or make some grammatical inprovements. It’s up to you.
  7. Use GitHub desktop to commit your changes and push them to GitHub.
  8. Retrieve your portfolio and check to see that your changes are now published.

Submission instructions

Due by the time and date indicated on the Schedule page, complete the above instructions and verify that you’ve successfully edited your portfolio locally and published the changes.

We will be building off this experience in the class which immediately follows the due date and time. If you have not completed this, you will not receive credit for the in-class experience.