Visual Studio Code for Python Programmers

CHAPTER 8Using Git and GitHub with Visual Studio Code

GitHub is a platform that provides hosting for software development and version control using Git. Ranked as the number-one collaboration tool in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020, GitHub is used by many developers for maintaining repositories and collaborating with others. The platform provides an interface that mirrors Git commands that are used within the terminal. Although you could maintain repositories within the GitHub interface, the built-in source control features and GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension brings the same GitHub features and functionality inside Visual Studio Code.

This chapter explores how to use the extension in the editor. To complete the exercises in this chapter, either create a GitHub account at github.com or use an existing one. If you're unfamiliar with GitHub, consider reviewing the “Hello World” tutorial provided by GitHub at guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/.

Getting Started

The project example used in this chapter is a currency converter created by Data Flair that uses ExchangeRate-API to provide currency conversion rates for 160 currencies. The interface for the converter is created using Tkinter, Python's standard GUI package (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1: The currency converter interface

The complete Python script is available in the Currency_Converter_Completed ...