3  IDEs & Git

An IDE (Interactive Development Environment) makes it easier to write code. These are the IDEs we currently use in the Council:

The list above is not exhaustive, fixed, or required, just where we’re at. All three IDEs integrate with Git.

Broadly speaking, you’ll need to install Git and link it to GitHub or Azure DevOps via your IDE.

3.1 RStudio & GitHub

Our experience is mainly with RStudio and GitHub, and we’ve relied on Happy Git with R by Jenny Bryan. In particular we recommend following these chapters:

Chapters 15, 16 and 17 of Happy Git with R cover different ways of setting up a local RStudio project connected to GitHub. So far, we’ve stuck with Chapter 15 New project, GitHub first.

There’s also a GitHub with RStudio cheatsheet.

3.2 Proxy server

When out of the office and connected via AlwaysOn VPN, both the HTTPS and SSH connection methods for GitHub and Azure DevOps should work. However, SSH will never work when in the office because the Council’s proxy server doesn’t support SSH. It works when out of the office because when connected via AlwaysOn VPN, not all traffic is routed via the Council and its proxy server.

Git needs to be configured to use the Council’s proxy server.

From the Git CMD app you need to run the Git command immediately below. First though, you need to substitute in the command your Council (not your GitHub) username and password, plus the proxy server IP address.

git config --global http.proxy http://SCC\username:password@proxyip:8080

Note: when you update your Council password you’ll need to rerun the command with your new password.

3.3 RStudio workspace

To encourage reproducible R scripts, Hadley Wickham recommends not preserving your workspace between sessions. This entails deselecting a couple of options to save and restore .Rdata (see chapter 8 Workflow: projects in Hadley’s R4DS book). Hadley’s recommendation also reduces the chances of inadvertently sharing PID in a GitHub repository. However, .Rdata should also be included in the .gitignore file and the repository set to private (see the section on GitHub security & data protection TODO).

3.4 ToDo

  • URL for GitHub security & data protection link in RStudio workspace section.
  • Update Proxy server section this side of Cloud Proxy
  • Azure DevOps
  • VS Code
  • SSMS & Azure Data Studio
  • GitKraken