You will be using GitHub in many of the exercises in this text. In order to use GitHub it is necessary that you have an account and a Personal Access Token. You will also configure your GitHub Codespaces to help conserve your free usage time.
If you do not have a GitHub account, or would like to have a separate account just for this course, you can create a GitHub account here: https://github.com/signup.
When starting your development environment for the first time (in SectionΒ 2.8Β Your Development Environment) you will be asked to enter a Personal Access Token (PAT) from GitHub.
A PAT is like a password but has some security benefits. In particular, you can have multiple different PATs. Each one can have different limits on what can be done with it and each one can be revoked individually without affecting the others.
Follow GitHubβs instructions for creating a classic personal access token. Be sure to select Tokens (classic) - you will need to do this twice - and to choose "repo" for the "scopes and permissions": Creating a Personal Access Token (classic).
Subsection2.3.3Setting the GitHub Codespaces Timeout
The GitKit development environment runs in GitHub Codespaces. GitHub provides you with approximately 60 hours per month of free Codespaces use. By default the GitKit development environment will timeout after 30 minutes of inactivity. It is recommended that you reduce this timeout to 15 minutes to avoid accidentally consuming your allotted free usage.