GitHub, explained

Your app is published with GitHub Pages. That means: the app lives in your own GitHub repository, it is free and public, and it has your own address, usually https://<your name>.github.io/<app>/. Once it is listed, lernapps.net serves a copy at https://lernapps.net/apps/start/<app>/; you stay its author.

You do not need to know GitHub. The tooling does most of it, and your AI assistant does the rest and tells you when a click is needed.

What GitHub is

GitHub is a website that keeps code and its history, runs checks on it, and can serve it as a website. You need a free account.

The parts we use

• Repository (repo): the folder of your app on GitHub, with every change ever made.
• Branches: versions of the repo side by side. main is what is published. work holds the work until you say yes to publishing. gh-pages holds the finished app that Pages serves. Your assistant sets up all three at the start.
• Pull requests: a proposed change, to look at before it counts. A pull request in your repo gets a preview of the app. Your app is listed in the app overview by a pull request to lernapps/apps.
• Actions: checks that run on GitHub after each change. They check the app and publish it when main changes.
• Pages: serves the app at its address.

After your app is listed

You keep working in your repo as before. When main changes and your app's address serves the new version, lernapps.net notices it within about half an hour and proposes the new version for its copy. A routine update, such as a newer tooling or newer packages, is taken over by itself once the checks pass. A change to the content or the code waits until the owner of lernapps.net has looked at it. You do not need to do anything for either.

Your app itself stays on the versions it was made with, until it is moved. Two helpers move it, once you installed them: Keeping your app up to date says which and how.

The clicks only you can make

Some settings only the owner of the repo may change. Your assistant tells you exactly where to click. The most common one, once at the start:

Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source: Deploy from a branch → Branch: gh-pages, folder: / (root) → Save.

If GitHub says "Resource not accessible by integration" to your assistant, it means just that: a click for you.

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