1 Install/upgrade softwares:

Windows machine:
- Install pre-compiled binary of R for your OS.
- Install RStudio Desktop.
- Install miktex.
- Install cygwin.
- Install Git for Windows; we will refer this as “Git bash” from now on.

Linux machine (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.)

Install R with sudo apt-get install r-base r-base-dev
Install RStudio with

  sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
  wget https://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-1.1.453-amd64.deb
  sudo gdebi rstudio-server-1.1.453-amd64.deb

Install Git with sudo apt-get install git

2 Git up

Register an account with GitHub.
Get the GitHub Student Developer Pack for free.
Configure your machine
- In a shell (Git bash in Windows, or terminal in Linux), do
```
git config --global user.name 'First Last'
git config --global user.email 'statishard@utdallas.edu'
```
- Check if you edited it successfully.
```
git config --global --list
```
- If you have a favor edictor (e.g., emacs, atom, etc.), do
```
git config --global core.editor "emacs"
```
If you run into error message along the lines of
```
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
```
You probably need to generate a new SSH key and add it to your GitHub account. Follow the instruction here.
Basic Git commands in terminal:
- git status
- git add
- git commit
- git push
- git checkout
- git branch
- git log
- git diff
Other actions
- fork
- new pull request

3 `RMarkdown` and `Knitr`

A full tutorial can be found here
A useful reference guide/book can be found here.
A short version of the reference guide can be found here.