8 ms·

How I Organize My GitHub Repositories

76 points by aicioara 8y ago

julvo 8y ago
TLDR: Use organisations as folders for repositories
meagher 8y ago
Cool to see. I do something similar. My main account is @tmm (https://github.com/tmm https://github.com/tmm) and my deprecated projects are in an org @tmm-archive (https://github.com/tmm https://github.com/tmm). Also put my data science university work in an org @tmm-ms (https://github.com/tmm-ms https://github.com/tmm-ms).
JoshTriplett 8y ago
I would love to see folders available beneath users and organizations. When a company puts repositories underneath github.com/companyname they all go in one giant pile; subfolders would allow organizing components of projects into folders.
dspoka 8y ago
Something I came across for this : https://app.astralapp.com/ https://app.astralapp.com/
- aicioara 8y ago
  https://astralapp.com/ https://astralapp.com/ should be a better link where the project is explained.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I would be kind of worried that a project under an organization may not be seen as "my project" when someone like a recruiter was looking at my profile. I am really excited by what https://ghuser.io https://ghuser.io is working on, and really hope GitHub takes more inspiration from them on how to arrange a profile, as it orders projects (whether mine, someone else's, or an organization's) by a score calculated based on the popularity of a project and how much you've contributed to it personally.
- michaelmior 8y ago
  > I only keep the most important projects on my profile page. Projects which I want others users to find and read. It seems like the whole point of the OP's organization scheme is so that only repositories which aren't in an organization are readily visible.
prepend 8y ago
This is nice that op gets value. But github has a search feature. Google searches pretty well. I rarely browse user accounts and if someone looked at my account and cared because I had forked stuff, then I consider it a bonus that they exclude me from their job search. There ar different philosphies to githubbing, the mistake is only when you project your own onto perceiving another’s.
ken 8y ago
> Fourth, another fork, but this time nothing has been updated for over a year. I guess the user pressed fork by mistake? A guess: they submitted a PR, and upstream never got around to merging it. My understanding is that the PR points to the fork, so if I delete my fork, the PR dies (or loses its content). Is that true?
- uranusjr 8y ago
  It is true. Another common case I see is people using fork as a way to snapshot stuff they depend on “just in case” (since forks don’t go away if the original is deleted or overwritten). I don’t do it, but it’s quite common. (source: I asked people why they fork my repo but never sent a PR) My stance to this opinion is similar to many others here: this is all good if it works for the author, but please don’t project your idea of a “good” GitHub profile onto other people.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Another reason I've run into to hold onto a fork: to have a version of some software with slight personalizations that are connected with version control to the main project for updates. QMK keyboard firmware is meant to be customized in this way, and it has many thousands of forks.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    I fork without intending to PR. Reasons: 1. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question, but I think I might have to extend the code in the repository itself. 2. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question but I feel more comfortable having a version of the code under my control as it will be quite central. (the snapshot) on edit: formatting fix
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "Group repositories together using Organizations" I've done this in the past. But then decided GitLab's ability to nest groups (i.e., have a hierarchy) made more sense. When I made the switch, GL had free private repos as well. Sure GH is bigger. But GL was / is a better tool for my needs.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Down voted? Why?
paulirish 8y ago
Occasionally I use https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github-forks https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github-forks to remove all the forks I've created that no longer need to exist.
Kagerjay 8y ago
I don't see the value in having so many organizations. This makes searching things harder. Github has search based features for finding repos you've made. If you have an organization seperating out these, it's no longer a one click search. I use github to search through my old codebases to extract useful code snippets from courses. You can pin 6 repos on your profile. If you want someone to see those projects, pin it up there. It shows where the repo originated from If you want to put all your tutorial code together, copy the end results into a /sandbox folder in github, and document the README to summarize how the repo is organized. Projects that have no relevance / tutorials should just be kept private, you could summarize courses you've done elsewhere. Sometimes I have exposed keys on there that I hadn't set an `env` variable, keeping things private is a good practice against bots I tend to fork a lot of repos without intending to push a PR, mostly so I can understand how that codebase works, and add my own notations to it. Also, it's to keep a backup for projects I work through other organizations, there's a chance that repo might be deleted down the road. You can always `git pull upstream` at anypoint and grab the latest changes If you want to show opensource projects you work on → pin it to your account, notate it elsewhere (e.g. portfolio page), and be on the contributor's page for that opensource repo
tracker1 8y ago
If you do a web edit/pr, github will create a fork on your account for that PR... this happens to me if I do a quick readme submission (a few times a month) ... I go in every few months and constantly surprised the number of lingering forks I have. I really wish that if the fork was created to do a documentation edit in the web interface, when the PR is requested, if the only things in the fork are that edit, it would just vacuum it away for me. Aside: I've also forked repos just to remember to look at them later. I really need to get in the habbit of curating my browser bookmarks better... I don't trust them though as the syncing has sometimes borked them.
jwilbs 8y ago
I find it very hard to believe any recruiter/interviewer would be turned off that my top 6 repos featured a mix of popular and unpopular, personal and forked repos. Limiting exposure of my open-source contributions to organizations adds not only another layer of search, but the opportunity for me to get passed up because my contributions to ___ weren’t immediately apparent.
jamessb 8y ago
It seems like the repository type in GitHub already handles several of these cases. A user's list of repositories can already be filtered by "type", and this handles several of his cases: > aicioara-forks — Projects I contributed to. Anything that I pressed “fork” on goes here. These gets automatically classified as type "Forks". > aicioara-old — Repositories that contain code I may want to refer to later, but I do not really want to be associated with. Maybe it’s a high school or university project with no stars and which no longer reflect the way I code. I don’t have time to update them, I still need to refer to them sometime, but I don’t want them to say “hey, this is how Andrei is coding today”. These can be marked as "Archived" (https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-repository/ https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-reposito...) This leaves the "boilerplate" and "gh-pages" categories, which could be indicated by adding prefixes to the corresponding repo names. If the boilerplate code is not intended to be generally useful it could be put in a private repository (especially as all users now have an unlimited number of free private repos
3KQgt0Cl 8y ago
Private repositories are now free to use by the way.

76 points by aicioara 8y ago

TLDR: Use organisations as folders for repositories

Cool to see. I do something similar. My main account is @tmm (https://github.com/tmm https://github.com/tmm) and my deprecated projects are in an org @tmm-archive (https://github.com/tmm https://github.com/tmm). Also put my data science university work in an org @tmm-ms (https://github.com/tmm-ms https://github.com/tmm-ms).

JoshTriplett 8y ago

I would love to see folders available beneath users and organizations. When a company puts repositories underneath github.com/companyname they all go in one giant pile; subfolders would allow organizing components of projects into folders.

dspoka 8y ago

Something I came across for this : https://app.astralapp.com/ https://app.astralapp.com/

aicioara 8y ago
https://astralapp.com/ https://astralapp.com/ should be a better link where the project is explained.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

I would be kind of worried that a project under an organization may not be seen as "my project" when someone like a recruiter was looking at my profile. I am really excited by what https://ghuser.io https://ghuser.io is working on, and really hope GitHub takes more inspiration from them on how to arrange a profile, as it orders projects (whether mine, someone else's, or an organization's) by a score calculated based on the popularity of a project and how much you've contributed to it personally.

michaelmior 8y ago
> I only keep the most important projects on my profile page. Projects which I want others users to find and read. It seems like the whole point of the OP's organization scheme is so that only repositories which aren't in an organization are readily visible.

prepend 8y ago

This is nice that op gets value. But github has a search feature. Google searches pretty well. I rarely browse user accounts and if someone looked at my account and cared because I had forked stuff, then I consider it a bonus that they exclude me from their job search. There ar different philosphies to githubbing, the mistake is only when you project your own onto perceiving another’s.

ken 8y ago

> Fourth, another fork, but this time nothing has been updated for over a year. I guess the user pressed fork by mistake? A guess: they submitted a PR, and upstream never got around to merging it. My understanding is that the PR points to the fork, so if I delete my fork, the PR dies (or loses its content). Is that true?

uranusjr 8y ago
It is true. Another common case I see is people using fork as a way to snapshot stuff they depend on “just in case” (since forks don’t go away if the original is deleted or overwritten). I don’t do it, but it’s quite common. (source: I asked people why they fork my repo but never sent a PR) My stance to this opinion is similar to many others here: this is all good if it works for the author, but please don’t project your idea of a “good” GitHub profile onto other people.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Another reason I've run into to hold onto a fork: to have a version of some software with slight personalizations that are connected with version control to the main project for updates. QMK keyboard firmware is meant to be customized in this way, and it has many thousands of forks.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  I fork without intending to PR. Reasons: 1. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question, but I think I might have to extend the code in the repository itself. 2. I intend to build something that requires the repository in question but I feel more comfortable having a version of the code under my control as it will be quite central. (the snapshot) on edit: formatting fix

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "Group repositories together using Organizations" I've done this in the past. But then decided GitLab's ability to nest groups (i.e., have a hierarchy) made more sense. When I made the switch, GL had free private repos as well. Sure GH is bigger. But GL was / is a better tool for my needs.

chiefalchemist 8y ago
Down voted? Why?

paulirish 8y ago

Occasionally I use https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github-forks https://github.com/denis-sokolov/remove-github-forks to remove all the forks I've created that no longer need to exist.

Kagerjay 8y ago

I don't see the value in having so many organizations. This makes searching things harder. Github has search based features for finding repos you've made. If you have an organization seperating out these, it's no longer a one click search. I use github to search through my old codebases to extract useful code snippets from courses. You can pin 6 repos on your profile. If you want someone to see those projects, pin it up there. It shows where the repo originated from If you want to put all your tutorial code together, copy the end results into a /sandbox folder in github, and document the README to summarize how the repo is organized. Projects that have no relevance / tutorials should just be kept private, you could summarize courses you've done elsewhere. Sometimes I have exposed keys on there that I hadn't set an `env` variable, keeping things private is a good practice against bots I tend to fork a lot of repos without intending to push a PR, mostly so I can understand how that codebase works, and add my own notations to it. Also, it's to keep a backup for projects I work through other organizations, there's a chance that repo might be deleted down the road. You can always `git pull upstream` at anypoint and grab the latest changes If you want to show opensource projects you work on → pin it to your account, notate it elsewhere (e.g. portfolio page), and be on the contributor's page for that opensource repo

tracker1 8y ago

If you do a web edit/pr, github will create a fork on your account for that PR... this happens to me if I do a quick readme submission (a few times a month) ... I go in every few months and constantly surprised the number of lingering forks I have. I really wish that if the fork was created to do a documentation edit in the web interface, when the PR is requested, if the only things in the fork are that edit, it would just vacuum it away for me. Aside: I've also forked repos just to remember to look at them later. I really need to get in the habbit of curating my browser bookmarks better... I don't trust them though as the syncing has sometimes borked them.

jwilbs 8y ago

I find it very hard to believe any recruiter/interviewer would be turned off that my top 6 repos featured a mix of popular and unpopular, personal and forked repos. Limiting exposure of my open-source contributions to organizations adds not only another layer of search, but the opportunity for me to get passed up because my contributions to ___ weren’t immediately apparent.

jamessb 8y ago

It seems like the repository type in GitHub already handles several of these cases. A user's list of repositories can already be filtered by "type", and this handles several of his cases: > aicioara-forks — Projects I contributed to. Anything that I pressed “fork” on goes here. These gets automatically classified as type "Forks". > aicioara-old — Repositories that contain code I may want to refer to later, but I do not really want to be associated with. Maybe it’s a high school or university project with no stars and which no longer reflect the way I code. I don’t have time to update them, I still need to refer to them sometime, but I don’t want them to say “hey, this is how Andrei is coding today”. These can be marked as "Archived" (https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-repository/ https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-reposito...) This leaves the "boilerplate" and "gh-pages" categories, which could be indicated by adding prefixes to the corresponding repo names. If the boilerplate code is not intended to be generally useful it could be put in a private repository (especially as all users now have an unlimited number of free private repos

3KQgt0Cl 8y ago

Private repositories are now free to use by the way.