42 Glossary terms

Terms and definitions

Application Programming Interface (API) key: This is an authentication token that calls an API, which is then called to identify the person, programmer, or program trying to access a website

Computer protocols: Guidelines published as open standards so that any given protocol can be implemented in various products

Distributed: Each developer has a copy of the whole repository on their local machine

GitHub: A web-based Git repository hosting service, allowing users to share and access repositories on the web and copy or clone them to a local computer

Merge: An operation that merges the origin/master branch into a local master branch

Private key: A secret and secure cryptographic key that must be kept confidential and protected and is used to decrypt data that has been encrypted with the corresponding public key

Public key: A safety cryptographic structure frequently employed to establish secure communication through data encryption or to validate the authenticity of a digital signature

Rebasing: The base commit that’s used for a branch is changed

Remote branches: Git uses read-only branches to keep copies of the data that’s stored in the remote repository

Remote repositories: Repositories that allow developers to contribute to a project from their own workstations making changes to local copies of the project independently of one another

Secure Shell (SSH): A robust protocol for connecting to servers remotely

SSH client: This establishes a connection to the SSH server, ensuring a secure interaction, where the client makes access requests

SSH key: An access credential

SSH protocol: Standard commonly used for logging in to servers remotely on the principle of public-key encryption

SSH server: This establishes secure network connections, undergoes mutual authentication, and initiates encrypted login sessions or file transfers