GitHub Desktop

Contributors: Bivurnum

I hacked with decomps for over a year without knowing the existence of GitHub Desktop. I'm not exaggerating when I say this would have saved me HUNDREDS of hours of work and headaches had I been using it.

The benefits of using GitHub Desktop:

• Your project is easliy backed up to its own online repository, so you always have access to it no matter what happens.
• You can easily create commits, which act as sort of checkpoints for your project. If you ever need to revert back to an earlier version of your project, you can just tell it which commit to revert back to instead of reverting your changes manually.
• Switching between multiple projects is simple and straightforward.
• It has compatibility with code editors to help track changes and easily resolve merge conflicts.

I cannot overstate how much easier GitHub Desktop makes working with decomps. Follow the guide here (by Pawkkie and RavePossum) to set it up specifically for the gen 3 decomps. It's not necessary to use GitHub Desktop to hack with a decomp, but why wouldn't you use something that will make your life that much easier?

Many of the upcoming sections will assume you are using GitHub Desktop. Any individual steps that mention GitHub Desktop can be skipped if you opt not to use it. (This guide by Lunos can help you use git for your project if you can't/don't want to use GitHub Desktop.)

Next section: Useful Commands