Github FAQ

by Elliott Hauser

20 May 2018

Github Questions

What’s a commit?

  • A set of line-by-line changes to one or more files in a git repository

What’s a branch?

  • A version of your source code. More precisely, it’s a sequnce of *commits that leads to the branch’s current state.

What’s the gh-pages branch?

  • Where Github looks to automatically build a site

What’s a Pull Request?

  • A social wrapper around the comparison between two branches designed to prepare for merging changes

What’s a Merge?

  • A process of incorporating the commits from one branch into another. Usually done from a Pull Request but also doable from the command line.

What’s a merge conflict?

  • When two or more commits specify changes to a single line of a file. These changes can’t be automatically integrated without potentially using work, so humans need to specify what should happen.
Elliott Hauser is a PhD Student in information science at UNC Chapel Hill. He's hacking education as one of the cofounders of Trinket.io. Find Elliott Hauser on Twitter, Github, and on the web.