Submitting a pull request with a Visual Studio ?

Question

I'm studying art, but decided to take a course in programming. We were recently given a github URL, cloning it produced an empty folder(except .git). We were instructed to submit a solution to homework as pull requests on that project.

I don't want to mess up such a simple task, so I'd appreciate an advice on how to do the pull request. One of the things that bothers me are what parts of my folders and files do I need to include. I have folders like _ReSharper.Classes and packages (from NuGet), how do I handle those?

Answer 1

This is a good starting point for understanding Pull Requests:

http://help.github.com/send-pull-requests/

Basically on Github, hit the fork button:

This will create your own clone of the repository. Commit your code in the new repo (if you're completely clueless with git, check out a getting started guide like this ).

When you're done, hit the Pull Request button:

Enter an explaination of your changes and submit.

Answer 2

As per Alex's answer, first you fork the github repo to create your own copy, though it is still on github.

Second you should clone that copy onto your own PC/laptop so that you can work on it.

Once you have the clone locally you should create yourself a branch to work in - this keeps the master branch available for reference.

Also use branches when trying new things so that you can keep the 'mistakes' separate from the good stuff before merging (often simply 'fast forwarding').

At suitable intervals push your repo back to github as a backup - check up on whether it is public (relative to any course restrictions)