4.1.1 “Commit” your new changes locally

• Look at the Git panel on the upper right section of RStudio to see if you have pending files that have been modified locally.

  

• Check the “staged” box for the files you want to update, or hit the “commit” button to open the Git pop-up section and check “staged” in there.

  

• If you’re not already in the Git pop-up, click “commit”.

• Review the changes and type a message in “commit message”.

• Click “commit”. Now your “main” branch is ahead or “origin/main” by 1 commit. The changes have been committed locally, but not to remote.

4.1.2 “Pull” to get other updates from remote

• If there are updates in the remote version that need to be updated locally, you need to “pull” those changes into the local version using the “pull” button in the Git panel on the upper right section of RStudio. Don’t worry if you forget to do this step, if there are pending commits to be “pulled” you will be prompted to do a “pull”. Also, if the newly “pulled” updates conflict with your new commits you will need to fix the issues before moving ahead.

4.1.3 “Push” your local updates into remote

• Click “push” to commit your local changes into the remote GitHub version. If you go back to your browser you will see the local changes have been uploaded to GitHub.

  

4.2.1 Creating a new branch

• You can create a new branch from the Git panel on the upper right section of RStudio by clicking on the branch logo to the right of the settings button.

  

• You can also use command line in the Terminal or the Terminal tab on R Studio (make sure you cd into your project folder):

git branch <branch name> #Creates a new branch
git checkout <branch name> #Switch to a branch

4.2.2 Making commits and basic “pull”/“push”

• The general process is similar to the one described for working on “main”, just make sure the right branch is selected on the upper right corner of the Git panel.
• You can also use command line in the Terminal or the Terminal tab on R Studio (make sure you cd into your project folder):

git pull # pulls into the current branch from its remote version
git push # push the changes from the local to the remote version of your branch
git status # show changes/edits made
git commit -a -m "your message" # stage and commit your changes

4.2.3 Merging branches

• Once you have committed your changes your local branch will be ahead or “origin/<branch name>” by 1 commit.

  

• After “pushing” to remote you can also see in GitHub that the new branch is ahead of main and make a “pull request”.

  

• Depending on the repository settings a number of reviews by other members of the team will be required before merging. Some members of the team might have privileges to merge without prior review.

  

• After the merge you can chose to close the branch or keep it open (see above about different working styles).

  

• After the merge you can open RStudio, make sure you are in the “main” branch, and “pull” in order to bring the merge commit into the local version of “main“. Make sure you cd into your project folder first:

• If you have closed the branch you can clean up in RStudio before opening new branches:

git checkout main
git branch -d <branch name> # deletes local version of the branch
git prune # removes objects that are no longer being referenced
git fetch --prune # delete remote refs that are no longer in use on the remote repository.

• If you have chosen to keep working in the same personal branch, switch to that and “merge main” into your branch locally and after “push” to the remote version.

git checkout <branch name>
git merge origin
git push

• Instead of doing all these steps from GitHub you can install the GitHub CLI and use command line:

gh pr create # create a pull request
gh pr review # show you description and website link of pull request. It does not let you review your own
gh pr merge # merge the pull request into main once it has been aproved. 
gh pr merge --admin # If you have admin privileges you can create and merge your own pull request

git checkout main
git pull
git checkout <branch name>
git merge origin 
git push