Introducing GitHub, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Viewing

In this chapter we’ll look at how you can view the state of a project to see what’s going on, so you can find areas that could be improved or so you can be familiar with the interface when you’re ready to contribute. We’ll use the popular Bootstrap open source project as an example.

Introducing the Repository Page

Bootstrap is a repository that allows developers to quickly develop attractive web applications. Go view the repository on GitHub. There is a lot of information on the home page. Let’s start by reviewing some of the most important elements on the page.

Take a look at Figure 2-1. One of the first things you see looking at the top left of the page is that the project name is “bootstrap” and that it’s owned by a user (or in this case an organization) called “twbs.” If you were to go to https://github.com/twbs, you’d see a list of all of the repositories hosted by that organization at GitHub. To the left of the organization name on the repository page you’ll also see an icon that makes it clear that this is a public repository that anyone can see. A lot of the projects you work on will have a closed lock icon and the word “Private” at the end, signifying that they are private and can be viewed only by people who have been explicitly given access.

In the upper-right corner of the page in Figure 2-1, you can see that at the time the screenshot was taken, 7,065 people were watching the repository to get notified every time new ...