> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://johnoraw.gitbook.io/iac-version-control/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://johnoraw.gitbook.io/iac-version-control/github/background.md).

# Background

These exercises are provided to give you a starting point with learning GITHUB. In a previous exercise, we created a GIT repository (repo); this provides a repo on one computer only, usable for one user. This is a local version control system, with a local repo. But we could keep a GIT repo on many different computers, or perhaps on a file share.

GITHUB uses GIT and allows us to create a repo in the cloud where we can store a repository. It’s just another computer in the cloud, running GIT. Once a repo is there, we can pull a repo to any other computer and as we make changes, we can push them to the GITHUB repo. Now we can share code with other users as well. 

But we have much more here; we have user management and many integrated tools.

As always, we have the churn and instability of commerical IT. By the time I have written these notes, they will be out of date, and the GUI will have changed. The best I can hope for it to create examples that work, such that you can figure out how to replicate, even when the GUI changes.