Hi Josh,



I’m a software engineer who is also blind and an NVDA user. What you’re
looking to do isn’t super difficult but also not exactly trivial if you
aren’t already familiar with GIT. That said, I’m going to give you the steps
needed to do it, from start to finish, and feel free to reply if you get
stuck at any point. Here goes:



Part 1 – Installing GIT For Windows



1. Follow this link to download the GIT For Windows 64 bit installer:
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/releases/download/v2.39.2.windows.1/Git-2.39.2-64-bit.exe
2. Once downloaded, launch the installer and hit next which will take you to
the select components step.
3. Press tab until you hear, “select the components you want to install.”
Most of the selections here we will leave as-is, but there are a few you
should make sure are selected as follows:

a. Windows Explorer integration – Checked
b. GIT Bash here – Checked

4. Hit next. This is where you choose which default editor to use for GIT.
If you have a preference, select it here, otherwise whatever it defaults to
is probably fine. Hit next.
5. The next several screens don’t require any changes so just keep hitting
next until you arrive at the step asking you about which console emulator to
use. Make sure you choose the option, “Use Windows default console.” I find
this gets along with NVDA much better than the default option.
6. Finally, just hit next until you get to the last screen where you can hit
Finish. GIT should now be installed on your computer.



Part 2 – Cloning The Repository

The next step is to clone the remote repository to your computer so you can
commit files to it, push your changes and open a pull request. Cloning
basically just means downloading a local copy of a repository to your
machine.



1. Browse to the GitHub site for the repository you want to open a pull
request against. I trust you already have this URL. It would look something
like www.github.com/<username>/<repo_name>.
2. With NVDA in browse mode, press D to navigate by landmark until you
arrive at the landmark “repository navigation landmark.”
3. Press comma to bypass the list of navigation links.
4. Press tab until you land on the code button, and then activate it.
5. Press tab until you land on the button to copy URL to the clipboard, and
activate it. This takes several tabs.
6. Press NVDA+C to confirm the URL was successfully copied to the clipboard.
You should hear a URL with a github.com address.
7. In Windows, navigate to the folder where you want to clone the repository
(or “repo,” for short.) Note that the repo will be placed in it’s own
subfolder within whichever folder you choose. Most people create a folder
called something like “dev” or “src” where they store their repos but it’s
up to you.
8. With the desired folder selected, activate the folder’s context menu and
choose “GIT Bash here.” This will open the GIT Bash terminal.
9. In the Bash terminal, type git clone followed by a space and then paste
in the URL we copied from GitHub. The usual clipboard hot keys don’t always
behave as usual in Bash so you might need to invoke a mouse right-click to
perform the paste. Hit enter to execute the command.
10. You should hear some messages about the clone operation as it executes.
If all goes well, you should see the new repo folder in the target folder
you chose. You’ve now successfully cloned the repo to your machine.



Part 3 – Adding, committing and pushing your changes in GIT Bash

Now it’s time to add the files you want to be included in your pull request.




1. Move the files into the repo wherever they need to go. Again, I trust you
know which folder they should live in.
2. In Bash, type git checkout -b branch_name where “branch_name” is a name
you give to the branch you’re creating. It can be anything but should be
short, relatively descriptive of the work you’re performing and can’t
contain spaces.
3. Type git add -A and hit enter. This tells GIT that those new files you
added should be staged for commit.
4. Next, type git commit -m “initial commit.” And hit enter. This commits
the newly added files to the repository and adds the comment of “initial
commit.” The comment can be anything you like but this is traditionally the
comment for your first commit.
5. Now type git push origin branch_name where branch_name is the same branch
name you chose in step 2 above. This command tells GIT to create a new
remote branch with that same name and push (or upload) all your changes to
it. Provided you don’t get any error messages, you have now successfully
added, committed and pushed the new files and we’re now ready for the pull
request.



Part 4 – Opening The Pull Request

We’ve made it to the final step, opening a new pull request for your branch
from the GitHub site. This part requires that you’ve already created a
GitHub account for yourself. If you haven’t, this part is just like signing
up for an account on any website so go through that process before doing
these steps. If you have an account already, make sure you’re signed in
before proceeding.



1. Browse back to the repo’s site on GitHub.
2. In NVDA’s browse mode, press D until you reach the “repository
navigation” landmark again.
3. Tab until you get to the Pull Requests navigation link, and activate it.
This goes to the Pull Requests tab.
4. Press 1 to navigate by level one heading and it should take you to the
Pull Requests heading. Tab a few times to find the “Create pull request”
link, and activate it.
5. Hit 1 to easily get to the main area. Press tab a few times and you’ll
find a pair of combo boxes related to comparing branches. The first one,
announced as “base” will be set to “master,” which is what you want. The
second will also be set to “master,” which we’ll change.
6. With that second “master” combo box focused, press alt+down arrow to show
the list of branches available. Either start typing the name of the branch
you created in the previous part or use the up and down arrow keys to find
it in the list. Once found, hit enter to select it.
7. This basically tells GitHub you want to take the changes you made and
merge them into the master branch. Tab until you find the Create Pull
Request button, and activate it.
8. This presents you with a form where you can enter a title and comment for
the new pull request. Make sure the title is clear and meaningful, and if
you want, add a helpful comment. By default, the comment will say, “initial
commit,” which was the commit message we used in an earlier part. Once all
that is how you want it, click Create Pull Request.
9. That’s it! The pull request is now created and will be awaiting review
and approval from one of the developers.
10. You should regularly check the comments section of the pull request as
developers may have questions or ask for you to make changes before they
approve it. Once approved, it will be merged into the master branch of the
repository.



This was a long email but I hope it’s a helpful guide! To others in the
community, if I’ve missed any steps or made any errors, feel free to chime
in. I was doing this in realtime, myself, with a test repo of mine as I
typed it so hopefully it should be pretty close.



Luke



From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Josh Kennedy
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2023 4:20 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] using NVDA to make a pull request on github?



hi
Can someone on here remote into my computer with NVDA remote and show me how
to install git on my windows system and make a pull request on github? I
want to just add some files to somebody's project on github with new voices
for a tts engine but this github stuff is beyond my understanding.

thanks,

Josh