Setting Up The Repository

Pawkkie

You've got two options when it comes to setting up a copy of the repository, making an isolated local copy on your machine and making a fork of it on GitHub. I'll cover them separately.

If you're already familiar with GitHub, I'd very strongly recommend just forking the repository. If you're not, I'd still recommend that, and a tutorial for how to do so will follow shortly.

Isolated Local Copy

Pros:

• Fast setup

Cons:

• No updates, have to download new material manually
• More difficult to submit assets, have to go through Discord

Install: Click on the big green "Code" button, then "Download ZIP". This'll just give you a folder with all of the repo's contents.

Fork

Pros:

• Nearly automatic updates
• Very easy to submit assets

Cons:

• Slower initial setup if you're unfamiliar with GitHub

Install: Click on the "Fork" button, then follow the prompts. If you're new to GitHub, please read the next section.

How do I set up GitHub? What's a fork and how do I make one?

Before you start, you'll need to do a few things if you haven't already:

• Make a GitHub account
• Download GitHub Desktop and sign in to your account
  • You don't need GitHub Desktop and can use terminal commands instead, but if you're in a position where you're reading this tutorial, I cannot recommend it enough and will assume you'll be using it.

Making A Fork

Now that you have a GitHub account, navigate to this repository's main page and click the "Fork" button in the top right. Fill in a repo name and description, and then click "Create Fork". This example image is making one for Pokefirered as I already own this repo so can't fork it, but the steps are the same. Once the loading bar is finished, you'll have a fork!

Getting Your Fork On Your Machine

Now that you've got your own copy of the repository hosted on your GitHub, you'll want a copy on your machine so you can grab files from it whenever you like. Open up GitHub Desktop and click on the "Add" button underneath Current Repository at the top right. Choose "Clone an existing repository," then choose the fork you just made from the options menu. Specify a local path to whatever folder you'd like to build the repository in, and then click "Clone." Once it's finished, you'll have a local copy of the fork you just made.

What's A Fork And Why Is It Useful?

A fork is your personal copy of this repository. You're in control of it and can change whatever you want about it without affecting this repository. In this case, a fork is useful in two main ways: it's very easy to update with new contributions the repository receives, and it's very easy to submit your own contributions to the main repository.

Updating Your Fork

This repository is unusual when compared to the decomps in the sense that if you don't delete anything, you should never have merge conflicts. This'll make updating super easy. Click on the "Sync fork" button in the top right on GitHub to update your fork from there with anything that's changed with the main repository, or run git merge upstream/main from your terminal, whichever you prefer. If for whatever reason there are any conflicts, you'll have to run git merge upstream/main from the terminal instead.

If you run "Sync fork", you'll have to click the "Fetch origin" button in GitHub Desktop so you can move the updates from your fork that's hosted on GitHub to your local copy. If you instead run the merge from the terminal, you'll have to commit those changes in GitHub Desktop, which I'll cover in the next section.

Adding New Assets To Your Fork

This is very simple. Add new stuff to the local repository. Once you've added new stuff, open up GitHub Desktop. It'll show you a list of everything you've changed, and give you option to "Commit" your changes. Give your commit a name, and then click "Commit to main".

Once you've made the commit, you need to push those changes to the copy of your fork hosted on GitHub to keep it updated. GitHub Desktop will prompt you with the "Push" command on the right hand size once you've made a commit. Push when you're done, and that's it!

Submitting New Assets To Main Repo

There are two ways of doing this, pull requests and sending material to Discord. Pull requests are SIGNIFICANTLY less work for everyone maintaining this repository, so please submit those if at all possible.

Pull Request

If you're intending to submit material yourself, you'll need to keep your repository updated before you submit, following the instructions in a previous section.

Pull requests are basically going "okay I can see that the parent repository (that's TAAR), and I can see that you have a personalized fork of the parent repository (that's your local copy), and I can see that you have made changes on top of what the parent repository has (that's the new assets you commit), would you like me to submit your changes to the parent repository? (that's the pull request, or PR)"

Once your repository is updated, go to the main repository and click on the "Pull Requests" tab. If everything is green, your repository is up to date and you're good to go! Click on "Create pull request", and it'll submit your assets to the main repository. If everything is not green, check that your repository is updated properly; if it is, ask for assistance in Discord.

Please use the README_sample.md as a template to include alongside your own asset submissions, it's very short and contains simple instructions for how to properly credit creators and add preview images.

Discord Submissions

Send your asset or a link to it to the appropriate channel in the Discord server, and indicate that you'd like it added to the repository. One of the maintainers will add it the next time they're available to do so. Note that you must supply the following submission criteria:

• Original creator of the source material
• Your preferred username, if this is your asset / your edit / recolour / resize / etc.
• Type of asset (song, overworld sprite, trainer portrait, etc.)
• Ideally a README.md file matching the sample provided in the repository