Today we’re publishing a new version of the NRE Labs curriculum, with some new content, as well as a few minor updates.
A few weeks ago, we relaunched NRE Labs under a new domain, with a brand new lesson UI, and a bunch of new content. As part of that effort, we doubled down on the project’s goals for 2020, which include a heavier emphasis on more frequent content updates. Today we’re continuing to make good on that objective with v1.1.1 of the NRE Labs curriculum.
New Git Content
The primary payload for v1.1.1 is a new chapter for the Git lesson, which covers “branching”. This is a way for you to use Git to work on multiple things, either with your own work streams, or perhaps with colleagues. Branching is one of the more fundamental concepts in Git, and if you’re going to work with it for your projects, it’s highly likely you’ll need to know how to use branches.
This lesson has been updated with some real-world examples to get you going, including a few run-ins with a made-up colleague “Fred” who seems to enjoy causing trouble.
Check it out right now, with a fully interactive environment, all in your browser.
Minor Updates
A community member wrote in on the NRE Labs discussion boards that the new Ansible lesson wasn’t successfully establishing an OSPF adjacency in chapter 4. It turns out this was caused by an improper vqfx configuration for that chapter, and was subsequently fixed for v1.1.1.
For much of the content in NRE Labs, we try to use real-world examples that are relevant to a network engineer’s day-to-day experience. We’re obsessed with making automation and other next-gen network engineering skills easier to consume, and the less mental hoops you have to jump through, the better. While Chapter 2 for the Git lesson was published in v1.1.0, we felt its current state was a bit too theoretical, and didn’t have that practical, network-relevant feel that we try to get to for the NRE Labs curriculum.
So, we decided to update it in v1.1.1 to include more network-centric examples. Rather than working with a “Hello World” style text file with Git, you’re now using a network configuration file, with familiar syntax. This makes it easier to bridge between the new world of Git and the world you already know and love.
More to Come!
This is a continuation of what will be a long string of regular content updates for the NRE Labs curriculum. However, it’s not possible without you. This curriculum was built and is maintained for the sole purpose of being a community-owned curriculum, so get involved! Head over to nrelabs.io/community and join our discussion forums, our standups, or post Github issues, or reach out to us on Twitter! Anything helps.