Now that you've gotten a little tour, let's check out how to get a bit more hands on!
Create a Github account
Go back to the Github page and create your own account. You can do this by clicking on Sign up in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Go through the process of creating your account with a username, your email address and password that you would like to use. You will have the option to create a free account with public repositories or a paid account that will give you the option of holding private repositories.
Check out and clone a buggy repository
Now that you are logged in, let's look at a repository that we will use to fix some code.
Let's review the steps in depth below:
Explore the project
Right now, this repository contains some code. Under the src directory, I see a few Java classes so let's take a look at them. There is something under the Issues tab. Let’s see what's going on there!
There are two issues. Apparently somewhere in this code, there is infinite loop and we need to do some detective work to figure out why! I also see that the second issue mentions a runtime error. I think we can use our debugging skills to figure out where that is happening! The first step to start working on fixes for the code is to clone the repository into Eclipse!
Clone the repository
Go to the right side of the page and click on the green Clone or download link and copy it by clicking the clipboard button.
Let’s take a look at Eclipse now and clone the repository. You may have to go to a window in the toolbar at the top and click Perspective -> New Perspective and then Other. Scroll down the list to click on Git.
You should see an option like this in the Git Repositories view:
You will also see the toolbar at the top with shortcuts to the same options:
Click on Clone a Git repository and you should find the wizard below. Where it says URl, paste the URL that you copied from the Github website for the repository. And it should autofill the contents at the top. Next, enter the username and password you created when you signed up for Github.com.
Now click Next and it will ask you what branch. Choose master and then click Next again.
You can select the directory, or file, that you want to use. Leave the Remote name as origin and click Finish.
Add the repository as a project
Now that we've got our repository cloned, what do we do with it? Let's check it out:
You will see that the project shows up in the Git Repositories tab with an arrow key and you can click on that to see the downloaded files.
Now you can see the cloned repository in the Git Repositories in Git form. You've downloaded a copy of the repository on Github, and have therefore created a local repository. This means that the repository is just on your machine.
How can you look at the code so you can fix it? Add the files from the cloned repository into the Project Explorer so you can open it in the code editor. You can do so by following these steps:
Right-click in the Project Explorer and select Import
Choose Git->Projects from Git click Next
Select Existing local repository and click Next
For it to show in the Project Explorer, you have to add it as a New Project.
You can give it the same name and click Finish like in the wizard below.
Now you should have the HelloBugs project in the master branch in your Project Explorer with HelloBugs.java. Click on HelloBugs.java and it will show in your code editor.
Now you've successfully cloned a repository! In the next chapter, we are going to fix the bugs, commit them, and push them back into the repository on GitHub in a new branch!
Summary
Now you know how to:
Clone a repository from Github.
Access the cloned repository in Eclipse.
