GitHub basics
So, we've seen how we can get our own code onto GitHub. What about downloading others'?.
You can set up organisations on GitHub, for groups of programmers (help). If someone adds you to one of these, you'll see the organisation and repos listed.
To download code from another repo you don't belong to, log into GitHub and navigate to the repo. Push the "Clone" icon which looks like a screen with an arrow (note that there is also a button to download a zip without cloning):
And allow the site to open GitHub for Windows. You must be logged in to do this, or it will just point you at the download for GitHub for Windows.
People not logged into GitHub can still download your code as a zip file.
If you want to try cloning, you can find some code to clone at:
https://github.com/AJEvans
https://github.com/MassAtLeeds
The final thing you can do is "Fork" a repository. This involves taking an entire copy of another repository and moving it to your development space. The usual reason for doing this is if you want to build an entirely new piece of software using someone else's code as the starting point. People quite like you doing this. You can find out more about forking on GitHub's help page.
That's it! Have an experiment with the interface and the website. You can't do any real damage as long as you're working on your own repos and not pushing code to someone else's.
In our final part, Part 5, we'll look at some other ways of using GitHub, and some of its other functionality.