Register for a GitHub.com account

Edit me

What is

Git is a version-control tool that has become increasingly popular among coders for facilitating not only version tracking but also collaboration and code distribution.

You do not need to have Git installed on your own computer, but you may want to. It is freely available from: https://git-scm.com/.

What is GitHub.com

GitHub.com is a service that allows you to host git repositories (sets of files being tracked by git) on a publicly accessible website, further promoting collaboration, sharing, and code distribution. Many applications, data, and more are distributed via GitHub.com, and we will use GitHub.com to explore using git for version control and collaboration. Indeed, the page you are reading now is part of a GitHub repository!

Register for your GitHub.com account

Go to GitHub.com and sign up for an account–please use your @ufl.edu email address when signing up, which will allow you to get an academic account.

Note: GitHub.com frequently updates their pricing model. By using your UF email and registering for GitHub Education (see below), you will gain free access to GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant. We will use this a fair bit in the course, so I encourage you to do this.

If you already have an account, but used a non-UF email, you can update your email here

Non-UF students can use whatever email is best for them

Tip: You should never need to pay anything or enter any credit card information for anything in this course!

Complete any email verification GitHub sends to you.

Register for GitHub Education

This is optional, but gives you free access to the GitHub Copilot, among other things: To add the educational upgrade to a pro account, you can go to https://education.github.com and follow the steps to request an educational discount.

The assignment

Accepting the Assignment

Tip: Why do I need this assignment? We will use GitHub a lot in this course. I need to know your GitHub username to help with grading.

For this assignment, we will use GitHub Classroom. Click on this link to access the assignment: https://classroom.github.com/a/tZM5f8lt (This link is for the Fall 2026 semester of the course at UF)
Authorize GitHub Classroom to access your account.
Click the “Accept this assignment” button.
GitHub will set up your assignment, but then give you an error saying that “You no longer have access to your assignment repository.” Sorry about that, not terribly user friendly, but seems to be how GitHub works.
- Check your email. There should be a message from github-classroom[bot], which the title “github-classroom invited you to comptoolsres/github-registration-…” with your GitHub username.
- That email has a “View invitation” button to accept your invitation to collaborate on the repository.
For future assignments, you shouldn’t need to do that. After clicking the Accept button for the assignment, you should get a screen that says “You are ready to go!”

Edit the README.md file

You will click the icon and find the text that says:
```
 ## Add your name below:
   
 Your name:
```
Add your name and click the green “Commit changes…” button.
In the pop-up, you can leave the default message and the “Commit directly to the main branch” option selected.
Click the “Commit changes” button.

Submitting the assignment

This is listed in Canvas at the GitHub Account Assignment.
This assignment will count as 5 points of your participation grade.
Paste the URL of your repository.
Submit the assignment, and I’ll grade it.

Now you should be ready for the next class! 🎉

Tags:

What is ?