[okfn-dev] How Github uses Github to develop Github

Mon Sep 5 04:47:04 UTC 2011

Hi,

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Tim McNamara <tim.mcnamara at okfn.org> wrote:
> This is how the Open Data Manual manages its source. There generally
> isn't too much discussion with merge requests, but it enforces a
> external code review.
>
>
> On 5 September 2011 05:16, Nick Stenning <nick at whiteink.com> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Forgive the silly subject header, I'm clearly feeling a bit too frivolous.
>>
>> Anyway, I just read the following blog post by Scott Chacon about some of Github's internal development processes, and I thought some of the readership of this list might find it interesting:
>>
>> http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html
>>
>> In particular, the use of pull requests as places for *internal* discussion about feature branches is something that hadn't occurred to me, and which would be a helpful way to encourage inter-developer discussion while we're working in different places around the globe.
>>
>> The second question which might be interesting to discuss at some point is the question of a virtually continuous deployment process. Are there any projects where we might benefit from such an arrangement?

The pull request machinery is really good.  The discussion is always
useful before the code goes in, and helps teach, because we get to
read each other's code.  We have used them routinely in our projects
(nipy.org/nipy, nipy.org/nibabel for example), and I know various
other projects that use it (IPython, numpy, scipy for example).

We came up with a standard github workflow that is shared across a few
projects here:

https://github.com/matthew-brett/gitwash

We use the standard technique of having each person (including the
main project admin) develop in their own github fork, and submit pull
requests to the main repo.

There was a discussion on the matplotlib mailing list a few days ago
about the same workflow article:

http://old.nabble.com/github-workflow-td32377014.html

See you,

Matthew