EDIT: So after spending the better part of an hour trying to make this work, I see a comment from someone pointing me to
an old post where I talked about using Mercurial for my project. I sort of vaguely remember looking at Mercurial at some point. I think I installed it?
I look, and sure enough I see Mercurial files in the Project Frontier directory. Hm. So I guess all I need to do is create an account on BitBucket?
I do so, but it turns out I already have an account. I log in, and I find weeks and weeks of meticulously tracked changes. Apparently I not only used Mercurial, but I used BitBucket, and I used both extensively. I can read through hundreds of changes. All written by me.
It is really, really creepy realizing that I did all this stuff and no longer remember it. It’s like looking at someone else’s work. Or like someone else is reading my work. Or something. I don’t know.
I’m worried there’s something wrong with my brain that makes me forget things. Also… what if there’s something wrong with my brain that makes me forget things?
Okay, I’ll be making the repository public, but I need to go freak out for a little while.
So I’m trying to add Project Frontier to GitHub. This is not going well.
Created an account. Created a repository. Installed Git locally. Followed the directions to set up git locally, which includes typing stuff into a Linux shell, which is trivial if you know what you’re doing and utterly, utterly mysterious if you don’t. Created ssh key. Set up a local repository. Added files meticulously one at a time from a list of hundreds of files because the Git GUI just lists all files and I don’t see how to filter for JUST source files. I hit commit and… nothing showed up.
Okay. This was supposed to be a quick & easy thing, and I’m now 40 mins in, I’ve got Git infrastructure spewed all over my computer and I can’t get it to do this very simple thing. I’ve used source code control before, and it was always pretty straightforward. Even thirteen years ago, I never had to type crap into a console window to perform simple tasks. Is Git only for people who understand Linux? (The front end is all friendly and Windows-like, which is what led me to believe I’d be able to do this. If it started with a console window I would have realized this was for someone with a different skill set and looked elsewhere.)
I see to get it to ignore the hundreds of unwanted files I just need to create a file called… .gitignore. Damn it. Stupid Windows will allow filenames starting with a period to EXIST, but it won’t let you CREATE them. (Minecraft has this same problem: the install directory is called .minecraft, which means if you want to backup & restore, you have to COPY files in and out of it, instead of renaming the directory.) You can blame Windows (I do) but the upshot is that I can’t use this feature on this operating system.
I have no idea what Git wants or how it works. I don’t see ANYTHING that tells me how to push changes to the remote repository. If doing simple things like “submit changes” means using a terminal window, then… damn. What year is it? I know you Linux coders have a high tolerance for this sort of thing, but damn – there are better ways of using a computer these days. Case in point: If I had a menu, I would be able to work this out for myself.
So, I’m willing to put time into this if it means it will be done right. But if Git is useless to a non-Linux person on a Windows machine, then it’s time to uninstall this mess and look elsewhere. So how about it? Is it possible to use GitHub with this GUI front end? Can Git work without using a terminal? If Git works on Windows, can someone explain how to go about getting files from here to there?
Sorry to use the community as a search tool, but Google isn’t helping and I’d like to know if I’m wasting my time before I do any more of this.
EDIT: Based on the comments, looks like GitHub is the wrong way to go for me. I’m going to try out BitBucket.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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