Lab 2

Some useful configuration

Setting up Visual Studio Code as the default editor for git

There are many times when git will pop open an editor, we'll set up that editor to be Visual Studio code.

Setting it up (thanks to this stack overflow answer)

  • Run git config --global core.editor "code --wait"
  • Now running git config --global -e in the command line opens up the config options in VS Code.
  • In the config options add
[diff]
    tool = default-difftool
[difftool "default-difftool"]
    cmd = code --wait --diff $LOCAL $REMOTE

Bash prompt customization

We can customize the shell by adding to the ~/.bashrc file. ~/.bashrc is a bash script which is run whenever you open the terminal.

Two useful utilities for git:

Copy these files into your home directory and add a . to the beginning of the names (e.g. .git-completion.bash), this will hide it. Then open up ~/.bashrc and add

source $HOME/.git-completion.bash
source $HOME/.git-prompt.sh
PS1='[\u@\h \W$(__git_ps1 " (%s)")]\$ '

source runs the specified file. For instance, after changing ~/.bashrc if you enter source ~/.bashrc into the command line, it will run the ~/.bashrc file and you should see your terminal prompt change.

Reading

Reading Assignment

Be sure to do the assignment associated with this week's reading. It's up on bcourses now. After reading write two paragraph-length responses

  1. Summarizing the reading
  2. Exploring something that interests you (e.g. one aspect in particular, something you disagree with)

Programming Reading

Read chapter 1 of Effective Computation in Physics to brush up on/learn command line basics. We won't be going over those in class/lab.