Doing GIT the Kraken Way
If you are on this page, you may have heard about GitKraken somewhere. Perhaps you thought, “Is this GIT here some typo”, or you happened to stumble upon this. However you got here, a little interest in tech is all you need to keep reading; you, after all, do use the internet. This post will not teach you how to code or develop but will just help you get started with GitKraken.
GitKraken is a GUI Git client built by axosoft. It can be used on your Windows, Mac or Linux. Git is a free open-source distributed version control system. While this definition would sound ambiguous and difficult to understand, all it simply means is that with Git, source code is made available to be modified while keeping track of the changes made for one to be able to go back to previous versions of the work. It saves locally (on the developer’s device) and remotely on a server. I recommend GitKraken for students as it aids the management of projects in faster, more user-friendly ways. Plus, you could sign up for the Student developer pack with GitKraken. I will be explaining to you how to do so soon enough in this post.
To get started with GitKraken, an understanding of a few basic terms would be needed:
Repository- This is storage for information in a data structure.
Commit- To commit means to save changes to the local repository.
Push- Transfers commits from the local repository to the remote repository.
Pull- This is to fetch content from a remote repository to the local repository.
The above are the definitions needed to get started on GitKraken.
To sign up for the Github education pack, simply visit the link education.github.com/pack, click on Get the Pack.
Fill in the required information (be sure to have already signed up to Github before visiting the site; or, you could sign up through the sign-up link provided if you are not yet).
If you are a student of a university, signing in with your school email address would fasten the process of getting the educational pack rather than with your personal or work email. If the school email is not what you signed up to Github with, follow the steps to add your school email to your Github account by opening your Github profile and navigating to the setting from the icon on your profile picture.
Don’t forget to reload the Sign-in page when you are done to record and display the changes already made. This would display the emails synced with your Github account, from which you would select your school email and fill out the rest of the required information. When you are done and click the get the pack button, you will receive a mail confirming you have received the pack. You could always decide not to add your school email, but it would take longer to get the pack as the confirmation process of your being a student would take longer.
Now to the gist of this post; to download the GitKraken application on your PC, simply search for GitKraken download on your browser. After it has been downloaded, open the app to set it up and log in with your Github account, or if you are yet to create one and are in a hurry to get started, you could simply Create a GitKraken Account.
After signing up, start a GitHub.com local repository under Init by clicking on Start a local repo. Input your Github account name, its description, the type of access you want to grant to it, the name you want to save your repository with, select the storage you would like for it to be initialized in (preferably your Documents folder). You could add your .gitignore Template and license or forge ahead to create your repository.
Create a branch of the master repository by clicking on the branch icon at the top of the and naming it. At the extreme right section of the application, right-click and create a file.
This will bring you to the text editor page of your application. If it is lines of code or anything else you want to work on GitKraken with, you make your input there. Go to the Commit Message section of the app and input the summary and description either or both for later reference or the benefit of team members, after which you stage your changes and push by clicking the Push button at the top of the screen.
To be sure your progress is being saved remotely, open your Github account on a web browser and look through. While on the website, after checking that your work has been committed to the local repository and you are satisfied with it, you could always make some changes from there and commit.
After which you Pull from the GitKraken app. From the page, you click on the merge button, as you cannot merge on the GitKraken app. After merging, go back to the GitKraken app and click on the Pull button to save the changes made (the merger) on the Git website to your local repository.
Moving on in your career as a developer, a technical writer, or any other Tech related discipline, you would need a portfolio site to have a professional archive for all your projects as a developer as well as have a reference point for anyone looking to hire a developer with skill sets like yours.
The Github education pack makes available a free, secure portfolio site. This brings us to the mention of Cloudflare, which oversees cybersecurity, hosting and domain name protection. They serve about 10% of internet requests every day. Cloudflare also provides Edge services to companies that make a lot of money online and cannot afford to have their servers down. With the Github education pack, the worry of having to buy a secure domain name is lost as you get a free, already secure domain.
Of course, this article will not be complete if the Salesforce open CTI (Computer-Telephony Integration) is not mentioned. This is a JavaScript API that lets one build and integrate third-party computer-telephony integration with the Salesforce call centre. It uses browsers, so you, as a client, do not need to install CTI adapters on the machine in use of the softphone. For those wondering what a softphone is: A softphone is a program used for making telephone calls over the internet using a general-purpose computer rather than dedicated hardware. With the Salesforce open CTI, you can simply make calls without the need for airtime. To all those money savers out there, I believe this is for us.
You are probably wondering how Git, Cloudflare and the Salesforce open CTI are related; here it is: With all three from above, you could grow from a beginner in developing to a business owner, in that order. By the time you have worked long enough with Git, you will have gotten the required skill set that can be considered and hired by people who have accessed your portfolio. From there up until whenever you decide to start your business or have something else doing while working for someone else, it is totally up to you to save money as a new business owner by creating an open CTI on the Salesforce call centre as well as signing up for any one or more of the plenty services which they offer.
Now you know how to use GitKraken, Cloudflare, and Salesforce open CTI to fulfil your craving for all things technical. Your journey starts here.
