Project Management: Positron, Git, and Collaborative Workflows

The QFC is offering a workshop designed to help you build organized, reproducible, and shareable research projects. Central to the workshop is Positron — a new tool from Posit, the team behind RStudio — which supports both R and Python and integrates smoothly with Git. There will be three 2.5-hour sessions building progressively from individual project setup to sharing and collaboration.

Instructor: Charles Belinsky (belinsky@msu.edu)

Topics:

Day 1: Foundations — Positron, Project Folders, and Git Basics
Get started with Positron, which you'll find intuitive if you're coming from RStudio. We'll cover how to organize your work using project folders and introduce Git using a simple, linear workflow to track changes and safeguard your work.

Day 2: Versioning and Sharing — Branches and GitHub
Build on your Git skills by learning how to use branches to manage different versions of your project without affecting your main work. We'll also introduce GitHub as a platform for sharing your project and making your work accessible to others.

Day 3: Collaboration — Git Workflows, Conflicts, and Team Integration
Learn how to work with others using Git by combining changes from multiple contributors, understanding how conflicts arise, and practicing strategies to resolve them. We'll then move to GitHub-based collaboration workflows, including how changes are proposed, reviewed, and merged in shared projects.