Git

Git-version control and plugin sharing

It is a good idea to use a version-control system (VCS) to keep track of the code that runs your experiment. This allows you to have a record of the software used to acquire data on a specific day of experiments. It also protects against accidental and untraceable changes to code on your microscope that could affect how data is acquired. The current recommended VCS for ScopeFoundry projects is Git.

Install git

Windows

for example using conda install git, or using the SourceTree software and configure it.
for new commers I recommend this youtube [tutorial]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7PV8auGLg&list=PLpL2ONl1hMLtlY1Y7YJNcA5zumvaITLYs&index=1

Remember to configure your git user info:

git config --global user.name "Nobody Nobinov"`
git config --global user.email "nnobinov@example.com"`

Start your main repo

Lets create a git repository to store the code for the microscope app

cd "to/your_project_folder"
git init

We add files using:

git add fancy_app.py

And commit changes to perminanet history using

git commit -m "cool changes happen here"

There are are many tutorials on web that address how to use git effectively, so we will not repeat that here.

There are also good graphical interfaces to Git that you may want to check out. One recommendation SourceTree that has a great tutorial.

Git subtree to modify plugins

If we want to modify existing hardware or measurements plug-ins we can use git subtree to import plugins into a git repository, track local changes to the plugin , and finally push these plug-in changes upstream.

To add the maser branch of HW_ascom repo from ScopeFoundry project to your git project (cd "to/your_project_folder") and

git subtree add --prefix ScopeFoundryHW/ascom_camera/ https://github.com/ScopeFoundry/HW_ascom_camera.git master && git checkout

(info on Errorfatal: working tree has modifications. Cannot add. Try: git checkout before trying again)

After modification, to share changes either

If you have write access: push the changes in the plugin subdirectory.

git subtree push --prefix ScopeFoundryHW/ascom_camera/ https://user@github.com/ScopeFoundry/HW_ascom_camera.git master

OR: first fork the plug-in HW_ascom on GitHub, and push to your repo (say master branch)

git subtree push --prefix ScopeFoundryHW/ascom_camera/ https://github.com/USER/HW_ascom_camera.git master

and submit pull-requests via the ScopeFoundry GitHub page.

Become a ScopeFoundry core developer

If you would like to have a local copy of ScopeFoundry to modify within your microscope repository, you can use git-subtree to make a local copy:

git subtree add --prefix ScopeFoundry https://github.com/ScopeFoundry/ScopeFoundry.git master

To update ScopeFoundry to the latest version

git subtree pull --prefix ScopeFoundry https://github.com/ScopeFoundry/ScopeFoundry.git master

Then your tree should look like:

├── .git/				# Stores Git repository information
│   └── ...
├── ScopeFoundry/			# Local Sub-tree of ScopeFoundry (overrides pip installed scopefoundry)
│   └── ...
├── ScopeFoundryHW/ 			# Local copies of ScopeFoundry hardware plugins
│   ├── virtual_function_gen/		# Local sub-tree of specific hardware plugin
│   └── ...
└── fancy_app.py