Welcome to Part 2! In this section we’ll set up accounts for the web services that we need – GitHub and Travis CI.

github

Set Up GitHub

GitHub hosts your code, makes it easy for other folks to collaborate with you, and makes it easier for other web services to hook into your code

Visit GitHub, and create an account. Once you’ve got an account, you need to create some SSH keys.

SSH keys are big numbers that GitHub uses for authorization. Setting them up can be a bit finicky, but we’ll get through it!

First, create a new SSH key by following these steps – make sure to pick the correct platform.

Now, we’ll add the key to our GitHub account. The steps to do so are here – again, make sure you pick the correct platform!

Finally, let’s verify that your key works! The steps are here.

Checkpoint

Run:

ssh -T git@github.com

You should see:

Hi <your-username>! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Set Up Travis CI

travis

Travis CI is a tool for “Continuous Integration”, which is just a fancy word for running the code that tests your software whenever you change your software. We won’t get to using Travis for a little bit, but let’s get the setup out of the way now.

Visit Travis, and make an account by pressing the Sign In With GitHub button.

You’ll be asked to authorize Travis to use your Github account. Do so, and you’ll get redirected to your profile screen. On your profile screen, press the Activate button to finish connecting Travis to your GitHub code.

Checkpoint

No command line here - you should be able to visit Travis, and see your name in the upper-right to indicate that you’re logged in.

Success!

We’ve set up the various web services we’ll need! Next is Part 3, where we’ll get to the code!

A Note About The Internet

All of the services we’ve gone over are on the Internet. There are local tools (e.g. Jenkins) that can do the same sorts of things that out of the scope of this tutorial. If you need to keep your code secret, they might be right for you. In general, we recommend using web services like the above because they’re much less hassle to set up.