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Basic

All aboard! Getting started with ChooChoo

graph LR
  A(1. <a href='https://lucydot.github.io/ChooChoo/students/setup#1-register-for-github'>Register for Github</a>) --> B(2. <a href='https://lucydot.github.io/ChooChoo/students/setup#2-find-your-choochoo-repository'>Find your ChooChoo repository</a>);
  B --> C(3. <a href='https://lucydot.github.io/ChooChoo/students/setup#3-raise-a-student-issue'>Raise a student issue</a>);
  C --> D(4. <a href='https://lucydot.github.io/ChooChoo/students/setup#4-monitor-your-progress'>Monitor your progress</a>);

1. Register for Github

  1. Visit https://github.com and click Sign up in the top-right hand corner.
  2. Follow the prompts to enter an email, username and password. Make sure you have access to the email account provided.
  3. After verification click on Create account.
  4. After verifying your email address you will be able to login to Github.

Note

If you have not used Github before there can be quite a bit to take in. Github (owned by Microsoft) is built on top of Git, which is an open-source version control system. Git and Github are extremely valuable tools to learn as they are used by most software developers in academia and industry. We are using only a very small part of Github/Git within a ChooChoo project.

2. Find your ChooChoo repository

There are a number of projects that use ChooChoo the Checklist Tool. Ask a course leader or instructor to send you a link to your ChooChoo repository.

Hint

All Github repositories have a web address in the form https://github.com/username/repo_name where username is the username of the person or organisation that created the repository, and repo_name is the name of the repository. Each person or organisation can have multiple Github repositories - usually one for each software project.

3. Raise a student issue

  1. Click on Issues towards the top of the page.
  2. Click on the green New Issue button.
  3. Click on the Get started button next to ChooChoo student thread.
  4. Click on the green Submit new issue button.

At this point you should see a checklist displayed. This is your personal checklist to work through.

Note

There should be only one student issue thread per student

Hint

If you would like a list of the student, admin and instructor usernames for your course you can run the command choochoo list people. You can then get their attention (for example, if you have a question) by mentioning them in an issue thread comment. To mention someone prefix their username with an @ sign; for example, @lucydot.

4. Monitor your progress

  1. Work through the links, tutorial and questions associated with each objective.
  2. When you are happy that you have completed an objective, tick the box next to it.

Info

If you can't find your issue thread you can search for it from within Github. Visit the course ChooChoo repository and click on Issues towards the top of the page. In the search bar next to Filters type your Github username and press enter. This will display all of the issue threads you have raised.