C#: Sharing a Visual Studio Pro 2017 Project on GitHub

This article will go through and provide a step-by-step guide on how to post a Visual Studio 2017 Project and Solution to a newly established GitHub Repository (repo).  As with many tools, there are a multitude of paths to take and different ways to accomplish a task like this.  This just provides one possible path to accomplish this task.

Step 1 - Add GitHub Tools to Visual Studio

Before we can use GitHub from within Visual Studio 2017, we need to install the plug-in to make it easier to manage.  You can of course just use Git from the command line as well. . . .this article instead looks at the GUI though.
From the Tools menu, navigate to Extensions and Updates.

Once the Extensions and Updates window opens up, navigate to the "Online" item and search for "GitHub".  The "GitHub Extension for Visual Studio" (the one with the official GitHub icon) is the extension you're looking for.  Find it and Install it.  

Step 2 - Configure the Team Explorer

For this next step, I'll assume you have the Professional or Enterprise edition installed with Team Explorer functionality.  Navigate to the Team Explorer if you don't already see it on your screen by going to View >> Team Explorer.

In the Team Explorer window, click on the plug-shaped connections icon to add a new connection to GitHub.

From here, we need to login to GitHub with your GitHub account (just go sign-up for a new account if you don't have one yet). 

Step 3 - Create a New GitHub Repo

Now that you've connected GitHub to your Visual Studio environment, you should see your existing GitHub repos listed in the Team Explorer Connect screen.  For this tutorial, we'll create a new repo for a new project by clicking on the "Create" link and entering some details about the repo in the accompanying pop-up window.

WARNING: you will not be able to mark the repo as "Private Repository" unless you have a paid GitHub Account.  Free accounts are only available publicly for all to see.  Again, just to reiterate. . . .the new repo you create will, by default, be PUBLIC and available for ANYONE to see.

Assuming your create request was successful, you will see a resulting success alert in the Team Services window.

Step 4 - Create a New Solution & Project In the Repo

Now that we have a repo, we can navigate back to the Team Explorer Tab and select our newly created repo to make it active in our work-space.

Once selected, the "Home" subtab inside of the Team Explorer should open and present you with a list of actions you can take with the repo.  Initially, we see that no project has been created or associated with this repo, so we will choose the "New.." link under Solutions.

This will bring up the familiar New Project wizard to allow you to pick your project type and name your project.  For this demo, we will just create a sample web project.

Once created, we can navigate back to the Solution Explorer and see our project exists and source code control icons exist next to each file to denote the status of each file under source control.  By default, Visual Studio includes all relevate source code files but one can add items to be excluded (e.g. add them to the .gitignore) pretty easily later on the commit page.

You should also note, that the toolbar at the bottom of the Visual Studio window now shows a number of Git-related icons that can be interacted with to view edits, make a pull request and select the active branch you are working in at the moment.

Step 5 - Commit Your Work Locally

Git, as an open standard, allows users to work locally on their machines with a copy of the source code in a local repo, and then when satisfied the code is correct, it allows you to commit your changes locally first, then eventually (and separately) commit your code externally to your server or cloud provider.
The first part is committing our work to our local repo hosted on our machine.
In order to do this, we simply click on the pencil icon in the toolbar, or choose "Changes" from the Team Explorer.

Step 6 - Commit Your Code to Cloud

Now that the code has been committed locally, it's time to commit our changes to the GitHub servers.  In order to active this process, we simply choose "Sync" from the Project Explorer to allow Git to see if anyone has already made changes on the server that need to be resolved on our client before posting our changes.  

Once Git has done its job and you have addressed any conflicts, the changes can be "Pushed" to the cloud from the Sync page.

If the push was completed successfully, a warning appears on the Team Explorer like so:

And you can navigate to https://www.github.com/ to see that your project is now accessible in the new Git Repo you created.