Git week

Welcome to the EMBL’s Git Week, on 15-19 Nov 2021!

During this week trainers from all over EMBL will deliver talks and run tutorials covering the different topics around using Git and the EMBL GitLab platform git.embl.de.

Git

Why should you learn to use a version control system (such as Git)?
From the Version control with Git lesson by The Carpentries:

• Nothing that is committed to version control is ever lost, unless you work really, really hard at it. Since all old versions of files are saved, it’s always possible to go back in time to see exactly who wrote what on a particular day, or what version of a program was used to generate a particular set of results.
• As we have this record of who made what changes when, we know who to ask if we have questions later on, and, if needed, revert to a previous version, much like the “undo” feature in an editor.
• When several people collaborate in the same project, it’s possible to accidentally overlook or overwrite someone’s changes. The version control system automatically notifies users whenever there’s a conflict between one person’s work and another’s.

Teams are not the only ones to benefit from version control: lone researchers can benefit immensely. Keeping a record of what was changed, when, and why is extremely useful for all researchers if they ever need to come back to the project later on (e.g., a year later, when memory has faded).
Version control is the lab notebook of the digital world: it’s what professionals use to keep track of what they’ve done and to collaborate with other people. Every large software development project relies on it, and most programmers use it for their small jobs as well. And it isn’t just for software: books, papers, small data sets, and anything that changes over time or needs to be shared can and should be stored in a version control system.

GitLab

GitLab is a web-based tool that provides a Git repository manager. By interacting with its intuitive web interface, you will be able to: store your project remotely, track issues, interact with your colleagues by integrating their work and comments, provide guidance to them and your users by integrating a documentation, a license and a roadmap for your project development, and much more, such as continuous integration and pipeline deployment. GitLab is an open-source projects and it allows to have institutional-specific instances, such as the EMBL GitLab platform, that is hosted and managed internally. Even so, you are still able to make your projects publicly visible or to work with collaborators outside EMBL.

Git Week activities will be run during mornings (9:00-12:00 CET) and afternoons (14:00-17:00 PM CET). Each half day includes between 1 to 3 hours of content, usually with some hands-on component where people can try it out themselves. You are free to join all sessions or just some of them, depending on your needs and interests.

Schedule

Please register your general interest in the Git Week through the form below. Please notice that, due to the fact that we will discuss EMBL-specific technologies, only applicants from EMBL will be accepted.

Bookings