git

Load different R package versions at once with git worktree

This post was featured on the R Weekly highlights podcast hosted by Eric Nantz and Mike Thomas. Do you ever see GitHub issue comments where someone posts the results of a reprex with a current package version, and then with an older one, to prove a regression? How would you go about preparing such a report? Today I learnt there is a clean way to have different versions of a codebase at once on your computer, thanks to the ever powerful Git.

Reading notes on Pro Git by Scott Chacon

As mentioned about a million times on this blog, last year I read Git in practice by Mike McQuaid and it changed my life – not only giving me bragging rights about the reading itself. 😅 I decided to give Pro Git by Scott Chacon a go too. It is listed in the resources section of the excellent “Happy Git with R” by Jenny Bryan, Jim Hester and others. For unclear reasons I bought the first edition instead of the second one.

Introducing saperlipopette, a package to practice Git!

I got more confident with Git since reading Git in practice. This has resulted in a more enjoyable Git practice! I’m also more keen to sharing Git “tips” with others, but felt it was challenging to quickly come up with examples to demo some Git workflows. This is what motivated my creating saperlipopette, an R package containing small Git playgrounds to practice various Git commands and strategies! What is saperlipopette? The saperlipopette package creates Git messes, or playgrounds, that users need to solve.

The two phases of commits in a Git branch

I seem to have at last entered my Git era. 🎉 Reading and applying Git in practice was probably the best thing I did for my upskilling this year. One Git workflow aspect I’ve finally realized is that it’s fine to have two phases of work in a Git branch. I’ll explain it in this post. Set up: create a branch for your work! Ideally, in most cases, when adding a feature or fixing a bug or whatever, I’ll work in a branch.

Reading notes on Git in Practice by Mike McQuaid

While preparing materials for teaching Git a few months ago, I re-read Suzan Baert’s excellent post about Git and GitHub, where she mentioned having read “Git in Practice” by Mike McQuaid. I added the book to my Momox alerts, where it got available a few weeks later. The book source is on GitHub. The book isn’t too heavy, so I took it with me on a long train journey! 🚋

git and GitHub in R for the casual user

If you’ve been taught git and GitHub but practice so rarely that you’re discouraged, what should you do to re-start more easily? Let’s imagine you have to, or really want to, use git and GitHub for your next analysis project. Here’s what I would recommend… I assume you already own a GitHub account. If not, refer to happygitwithr guidance. Thanks to the people who shared recommendations on Mastodon, whose names are acknowledged in the rest of the post!