Introducing GitHub, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3. Creating and Editing

In this chapter we’ll look at how you can create and work with your first repository. Creating this repo means that you’ll always have access to the code and the additional information contained in pull requests, issues, projects, and wikis. We’ll then look at how you can add, edit, rename, or delete a file directly on GitHub. We’ll also look at how to work with directories on GitHub, and finally we’ll discuss what to do when you want to make multiple changes as part of a single commit. From this point forward, if you want to follow along you’ll need to create an account by going to https://github.com/join.

Creating a Repository

To create a new project on GitHub, click the + sign to the right of your username at the top right of the page. Then click the “New repository” option in the drop-down list. You’ll see the new repository form, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1. The new repository form

The first thing to do is decide whether to create the repository under your username or under an organization. You can see in Figure 3-2 a list of the possible organizations to which I could add a new repository. If you don’t have access to any organizations, just leave this defaulted to your username. Remember, you’ll always be able to transfer the project later if you want to.

Figure 3-2. Selecting who should own the new repository ...