5.1.3. Coding in Teams

Collaborative coding is so essential to the process of solving interesting finance problems, that it underlies the objectives at the front of this website.

This page is focused on helping your teams attack the project in the most effective way. And it includes a few things that will push your existing GitHub comfort level up and make your team more productive.

Warning

Warning! Warning! Warning!

FOLLOW THESE RULES EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU WORK ON CODE OR DO ANYTHING IN THE REPO

  1. BEFORE YOU START ANY WORK FOR THE DAY: Go to GH Desktop and “Fetch/Pull” origin

  2. WHEN YOU ARE DONE WITH A WORKING SESSION: Clear your code, rerun all, save file, then push to cloud

If you forget to fetch/pull before you start (and someone made a change on the github repo since you last synced), or if someone is working at the same time (and pushes a change to the github repo that conflicts with a change you made), you are likely to receive a “Merge Conflict” notification from GH Desktop.

Collaboration as a group

I would love your feedback on how you deal with the asynchronous work problem!

  • Please let me know what issues/problems your group runs into

  • What solutions did you use (were they good or awful?)

  • If your group has an easy time, or finds something that works well, please let me and your classmates know!

  • Submit your experience on this via the discussion board

5.1.3.1. Branching Demo

Here’s the side text from the video:

  • Open GH Desktop and create a toy repo

  • start new branch “my work”

  • add data/data.txt into folder (to simulate some work you’ve done)

  • see how GH Desktop sees a change?

  • click to try to switch branch (don’t though)

    • it says “leave changes on this branch or bring to master” –> only the branch you’re “in” can see/push changes you make

    • cancel

  • commit to branch

  • publish up to GH website

  • view on GH

    • switch branches to see the new files

    • compare: you’re able to merge

    • can explain your argument for changes (to convince others to adopt in distributed projects), submit

    • merge, confirm

    • look at master branch - it should have data/data.txt

    • create “cynthia_did_some_work.txt” which says inside: “while i was sleeping”

  • go back to desktop like you’re going to work on the project

    • go to master… pulling origin would sync it but dont

    • go to “my work” branch

    • fetch / update from master: this gets the cynthia file, and I can continue

    • push this new file back up to my own branch on GH’s servers

    • make a new fake work file

      • publish/push

      • pull request

      • merge into main one more time