Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Developing Open Web Apps: First, get it onto the web

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I'll let you all in on a secret. I have tried and tried and tried to wrap my mind around how to make svn and git work and I just can't do it. I get the concept, but there is from my perspective no good guide to these. The latest series of instructions, these from L.M. Orchard - who is very good - is typical. Here's he's trying to provide basic instructions describing how to launch a project on the web. I'd love to launch a project on the web. I didn't make it past the second step in his instructions. I made a repository (his instructions just said 'make a repository' so I had to feel my way around here) and cloned it in my Dropbox public folder (no instructions here either, but I had Dropbox handy, so I was OK). But then git co -b gh-pages failed utterly for me

Granted, I have never been good with svn or git. But I do have an account on github and the Mingw32 Official Git Client on my Windows box. I cloned my-project with it no problem. But when I try 'git co -b gh-pages'  everything begins to fail. It says 'co' is not a command. So I assume 'co' means 'commit'. It says 'unknown switch -b' - and here I assume the switch is '--branch' (had to look that up on the web). I'm assuming 'gh-pages' is the name of a branch, because there's one in Orchard's repository. Not sure how it was made. The command fails, so it wasn't made with the command. But I can't find any way on the website to create the branch. So now I'm stuck.

Why am I telling you all this? To let you know I'm really sympathetic when people say this tech stuff is difficult. It's difficult for me too, and even the best documentation frequently simply doesn't work. Don't blame yourself, don't think you're the only one, and don't think some people never get stuck. They do - they all do.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 01:21 a.m.

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