Cecelia Martinez

Posted on Jul 16

Study Notes: GitHub Foundations Certification Exam

#github #certification

In February of this year I successfully passed the GitHub Foundations Certificate Exam. I have used GitHub for about five years and am a GitHub Star Alumni, so I felt fairly confident going into the study process. However, there were still some gaps in my knowledge and I wanted to be prepared.

This post is a collection of links, resources, and my notes from the study process. Hopefully it is helpful to you for your own certification journey.

Study Approach
Notes
Other Resources

Study Approach

Exam Guide

To start, I reviewed the Exam Guide. This guide has a detailed breakdown of the topics covered on the exam, as well as the percentage weights of the different domains. This was my strategy:

Review the topics underneath each domain
Identify areas where I only had limited knowledge (marked in yellow) or little-to-no knowledge (marked in red)
Assign a comfort level to each domain (red, yellow, or green) based on assumed knowledge of the topics
Evaluate domain percentages to understand where to prioritize studying

This helped me to create a plan on what areas to focus on in preparation for the exam. If you’re curious, this was my personal breakdown before I began studying:

Domain 1: Introduction to Git and GitHub (22%) (GREEN)
- GitHub Entities (RED)
- GitHub Desktop (YELLOW)
- GitHub Mobile (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 2: Working with GitHub Repositories (8%) (GREEN)
- CODEOWNERS file (RED)
- Repo templates (YELLOW)
- Repo insights (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 3: Collaboration Features (30%) (GREEN)
- Issue forms (RED)
- CODEOWNERS file (RED)
- Discussions (YELLOW)
- Notifications (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 4: Modern Development (13%) (YELLOW)
- GitHub Codespaces (RED)
- GitHub Copilot (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 5: Project Management (7%) (YELLOW)
- Difference between Projects and Projects classic (RED)
- Configuration options (YELLOW)
- Template repos (YELLOW)
- Project workflows (YELLOW)
- Project insights (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 6: Privacy, Security, and Administration (10%) (RED)
- GitHub Administration (RED)
- Authentication and Security (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)
Domain 7: Benefits of the GitHub Community (10%) (GREEN)
- InnerSource (YELLOW)
- Everything else (GREEN)

Microsoft GitHub Foundations Course

There is a recommended free(!) Microsoft GitHub Foundations Course. I did start this course, but felt like a lot of the material covered things I already knew and I grew impatient 😅. However, I recommend it if you are starting fresh or more patient than I am!

You can check out my notes from the sections of the course I did complete below.

Udemy Practice Exams

Instead, I decided to get this practice exam bundle on Udemy. Depending on how you prefer to study, this could be helpful for you. I actually passed the first practice exam, but had EXACTLY a 75%, and wanted to be more confident.

The practice tests not only tell you what questions were correct, but had detailed notes explaining the answers with links to relevant documentation. I hand-wrote notes (transcribed below) for the questions I either got wrong or got correct but had guessed/wasn’t confident in my answer.

Hand-writing the notes helped to reinforce the information in my brain. I also read through the linked docs and took extra notes to clarify what I thought would be important concepts. By the time I took the fourth practice exam, I scored a 93%.

I ultimately passed my certification exam with a score of 90%.

Notes

This section has raw notes from my studies. They are based on my individual learning, and should not be considered a comprehensive study guide because things I already knew are not included. However, they may be helpful for you.

⚠️ Disclaimer: I took my exam in February, so some items may have changed since then! Always refer to the GitHub docs for the most up-to-date information.

Helpful Docs Links

This is a list of links to areas of the GitHub docs I found helpful while studying.

Base Permissions
CoPilot
Automating Projects
Workflow Basics
Organization News Feed
Best Practices for Projects
GitHub Security Features
Issue and pull request templates
Project insights
Projects vs Projects Classic:
- Projects
- Projects Classic
Branch protection rules
Best Practices for Repositories
GitHub Sponsors

Notes from Microsoft Course

Git

VCS - version control system
SCM - software configuration management system
VSC can exist for not-software, VSC is one component of a SCM
Git is distributed, meaning project history is stored locally and remotely
- This is as opposed to centralized, where all project history in only stored on centralized server

Git terminology

Working tree - set of nested directories and files that contain the project
Repository - The top-level directory of a working tree where history and metadata is stored
- Bare repo - isn’t part of a working tree, used for sharing/backup (project.git)
Hash - number produced by hash function that represents the contents of a file, used to determine if a file has been changed
Object - Git repo contains four types of objects, each identified by a SHA-1 hash.
- Blob - contains ordinary file
- Tree - represents a directory, contains names, hashes, and permissions
- Commit - represents specific version of the working tree
- Tag - a name attached to a commit
Commit - either an object (commit) or a verb meaning to make a commit object
Branch - a named series of linked commits
- Head - Most recent commit on a branch
- Main/master - default branch of a repo
- Allow developers to work independently and then merge changes into default branch
Remote - named reference to another Git repo
- Origin - the default remote for push and pull operations created when repo is initialized
Git (command) push (subcommand) —hard (option)

Git and GitHub

Git is a DVCS (distributed version control system)
GitHub is a cloud platform that uses Git as its core technology and acts as the remote repository
Git can also be described as a CLI for managing version history locally
GitHub can also be described as a place to collaborate on shared repositories with issues and pull requests

Command Line commands

git config
- git config —global user.name “USER_NAME”
- git config —list
git init
git status
git add (staging)
git commit
git log
git help
- git <command> —help
git checkout -b branchName is the best way to create and check out a new branch

Introduction to GitHub

How to create a repository
How to add a file to your repository
- Manually in GitHub UI adding file in directory, then typing content, and committing changes directly to a new pull request branch
Gists
- simplified way to share code snippets. Every gist is a Git repo so it can be forked and cloned.
Wiki
- Documentation section included with every GitHub repo
- Used to share long-form content beyond the README

GitHub Flow

Branches
Commits
- Every commit has a unique ID and tracks the time and contributor
States for a file in a repo:
- Untracked - Git unaware of its existence
- Tracked - can be one of the following substates:
  - Unmodified
  - Modified
  - Staged
  - Committed
Pull requests
- Signals commits from one branch are ready to be merged into another
GitHub Flow
- Creating a branch
- Make changes
  - Deploy changes to feature branch to ensure they work in productIon (recommended)
- Create a pull request
- Reviewing and implement feedback
- Approve and merge PR into main branch
- Delete branch

GitHub Collaboration

Issues
- Track ideas, feedback, tasks, or bugs
- Can be created from repo, item in task list, note in project, comment in an issue or PR, specific line of code, URL query
- Only maintainers can assign, add to project board, associate with milestone, or apply a label
Discussions
- For conversations accessible to everyone that aren’t related to code
- Enable Discussions in Settings > Features > Discussions
- Any authenticated user with view access can create a discussion in that repo
- There are default categories, and more can be added with an emoji and name pairing

GitHub Platform Management

Subscriptions and notifications
GitHub Pages
- Static site hosting service from files in a repo

Introduction to GitHub’s products

Personal accounts
- Every person has a personal account
- Can be GitHub Free or Pro
Organization accounts
- Shared accounts for people to collaborate across many projects at once
- Permissions have a tiered approach
- Can’t sign into organization directly
- Personal accounts can be given roles in an organization
Enterprise accounts
- Allow admins to centrally manage policies and billing for multiple organizations and enable inner sourcing between orgs
- Must have a handle, like an organization
- Manage and enforce policies for all orgs in enterprise
GitHub teams
- group of organization members intended to reflect company structure
GitHub plans
- Free for personal and org
- Pro for personal
- Team for organizations
- Enterprise
  - Server (self-hosted)
  - Cloud
GitHub Mobile
- first-party client app
- Can’t approve or merge PRs
GitHub Desktop
GitHub billing is account based, includes subscription and usage-based billing

Notes from Practice Test 1

My notes for each subsequent practice test become less detailed, as I learned more with each exam.

General

cloning = copying ENTIRE repo
forking = create private copy for personal use
template repos can have any files or content
reason: is a way to filter notification (such as searing for only at-mentions)
Tabs on a PR: Conversation, Commits, Checks, Files changed
Can create branch directly from an issue
Repo insights show traffic, projects, and contributor engagement
GitHub topics examples: repo purpose, subject area, affinity groups, community, language, etc.
- labels that create subject-based connections between repos
- Discover similar projects based on topic
Code scanning available on public repos, private requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Advanced Security
Copilot analyzes current and related files for context
GitHub limits sizes of files allowed in repos. Enable Git Large File Storage to track large files
GitHub organizations have a news feed that shows:
- Open/closed/merged issues and PRs
- creation/deletion of branches
- Created tag or release
- Comments
- New commits pushed

Access

members of an org = create repos and project boards by default
personal repo permission levels = owners & collaborators
org owners can require members, collaborators, and billing managers to enable 2FA
- If 2FA not enabled, they will be removed from org with no grace period
GitHub Enterprise repo visibility options: private, public, internal
Organization repo roles:
- Read: Recommended for non-code contributors who want to view or discuss your project
- Triage: Recommended for contributors who need to proactively manage issues, discussions, and pull requests without write access
- Write: Recommended for contributors who actively push to your project
- Maintain: Recommended for project managers who need to manage the repository without access to sensitive or destructive actions
- Admin: Recommended for people who need full access to the project, including sensitive and destructive actions like managing security or deleting a repository
Organization roles:
- Owners: Organization owners have complete administrative access to your organization. Should be limited but have at least two.
- Members: The default, non-administrative role for people in an organization is the organization member.
- Moderators: Moderators are organization members who, in addition to their permissions as members, are allowed to block and unblock non-member contributors, set interaction limits, and hide comments in public repositories owned by the organization.
- Billing managers: Billing managers are users who can manage the billing settings for your organization, such as payment information.
- Security managers: Security manager is an organization-level role that organization owners can assign to any team in an organization.
  - In public beta
- GitHub App managers: By default, only organization owners can manage the settings of GitHub App registrations owned by an organization. To allow additional users to manage, an owner can grant them GitHub App manager permissions.
- Outside collaborator: To keep your organization's data secure while allowing access to repositories, you can add outside collaborators. An outside collaborator is a person who has access to one or more organization repositories but is not explicitly a member of the organization, such as a consultant or temporary employee.

Codespaces

can have deep link to create a codespace with pre-configured options
can change display name, shell, machine type, and region
only supports Linux
run in GitHub-owned Azure account (but can be billed to your Azure)
A codespace is a Docker container configured for development run on a GH-managed VM

Projects

Github CLI and GraphQL API
Project insights available for all with write and admin access

CodeOwners

automatically requested for review on PRs
Can also be use for requiring approval from code owner before merge
hover over shield icon on file in GitHub to see code owner
people with write permission to repo can create or edit CODEOWNERS file
- Code owners must also have write permission
requires GitHub Pro, Team, or Enterprise to have code owners on a private repo
defined in a CODEOWNERS file (no extension) in the .github/ , root, or docs/ directory (GH will search in this order for file)
Branch-specific based on branch where file is
syntax is similar to gitignore:



.js @js-owner // all files ending in .js have user js-owner as code owner

.txt @octo-org/octoteam // team octoteam within octo-org owns all .txt files

/docs/ @docsowner // all files in docs directory are owend by user docsowner

Notes from Practice Test 2

Add issue forms with YAML form definition file in /.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE
Form responses converted to markdown and added to body of issue
Project can be organization or user project
Branch protection rules prevent accidental or unauthorized changes to a branch
Two types of project charts: current & historical
2FA methods: TOTP app on mobile/desktop or text message
- Security keys can be added as an alternate 2FA method, NOT primary
Can do web-based code editing in GitHub mobile
- Cannot do automated testing or CI
Innersource: build proprietary software using OSS methodologies
Internal repos let orgs practice innersource
- Requires GH Enterprise Cloud
All enterprise members have read permission to internal repos
Internal repos are not visible to outside collaborators of other org repos
Internal is the default setting for all new repos created in an enterprise org
Up to 10 people can be assigned to an issue or PR
- limited to 1 for private free repos
Templates created from existing repositories have same directory structure, branches, and files
Template can select only default or all branches to copy from original
Security tab includes:
- Security policies
- Advisories
- Dependabot alerts
- Code scanning results
- Secret scanning results
Projects provide more robust integrations vs Projects Classic
Projects (vs. Projects Classic) designed to integrate with existing tools, such as GraphQL API and GitHub Actions
Codespaces can use account secrets as environment variables
Project Layouts: Board, Roadmap, and Table
Docs for name options for pull request templates
PR and issue templates MUST be in the default branch
Projects, issues, and GitHub Actions can be disabled on a repo
Milestones provide visual roadmap to track progress on issues & PRs
Discussions can be pinned
The automatic retention period of up to 30 days for Codespaces can be reduced to save costs
Following an organization lets you see activity like new discussions, sponsorships, and repositories

Notes from Practice Test 3

Going from public to private:
- removes a repo from GitHub Archive Program
- unpublishes any published GitHub Pages
Triage role is for proactively managing issues, discussions, and PRs WITHOUT write access
Org repo roles:
- read
- triage
- write
- maintain
- admin
- Security manager role for org in public beta. Give read access to all repos, write for security alerts, can configure code security settings at org and repo level (Docs reference)
Permanent link can be created for a line or range of lines in a version of a file or PR
On public repos, dependency graph and secret scanning alerts for PARTNERS are always enabled
Codespaces specific secrets are setup in Settings > Code, planning and automation > Codespaces > New secret. Set name, value, and repos with access.
GitHub sponsorship requires a GH-sponsor enabled dev or org profile
- Must contribute to OSS project and live in a supported region
- Up to 10 one-time and 10 monthly tiers
Can mark an issue as duplicate by typing “Duplicate of” and the issue/PR number in body of new comment
- Must have write access
- Can be undone if needed
Max GitHub Project items = 1200
- Max 10,000 archived

Notes from Practice Test 4

Commit vs hash:
- A commit is a specific and immutable snapshot capturing changes made to files, creating a chronological record in version history
- A hash is a number representing the contents of a file or another object
GitHub sponsorships can be paid via Patreon
Bitcoin is not supported for GH sponsors
Owners or admins can be allowed to limit repo visibility changes
Default categories for discussions:
- Announcements
- General
- Ideas
- Polls
- Q&A
- Show & Tell
Workflow triggers:
- Events in repo
- Events outside GH that trigger a repository-dispatch event
- scheduled time
- manual
Organizations can have more than one owner
Owners cannot change their own role, but can change the role of another owner
Enable Feature preview to gain access to Alpha and Beta features
Admin permission is required to enable/disable GH discussions
Security markdown file is for security related communication, such as reporting vulnerabilities
Project Insights not available on Project Classics
Saved replies can contain any text, markdown, and emoji reactions
Maintain role recommended for project managers

Other Resources

If you're looking for more comprehensive exam prep, check out the following resources from FreeCodeCamp:

Happy studying, and good luck!!

Top comments (8)

Domenico Tenace • Jul 25

Hi @ceceliacreates :)
Thank you for sharing this little guide.
It will be useful to me!

Cecelia Martinez • Jul 25

Great! Glad you found it helpful 😄

Anitha Acharya • Oct 4

Amazing notes dear! Very helpful. I passed the exam today. I additionally would highly recommend using Skillcertpro's mock exams . The practice tests were nearly identical to the actual exam, with about 80% of the questions on the main exam covered in these. They also offer exam notes that I’d suggest reviewing during the final days before the exam to quickly cover the important topics. Best of luck to everyone! exam is relatively easy. prepare well.