Using GitHub to manage non-code projects

At the end of this episode, learners will be able to:

• List reasons why GitHub is a suitable platform for collaborative, non-code projects
• Know where to get help with GitHub and its features Teaching: 10 minutes

GitHub originally started as a collaborative platform for software development projects. Based on git, it has a robust version control system that allows one or more people to work concurrently on a project, have a formal review process, and manage conflicts between contributions.

This robust system has many conventions that become second nature over time, but can be daunting to new users. In this session we will be learning these terms and concepts:

• Repo (Repository - aka ree-po and reppo)
• Clone
• Fork
• Branch
• Commit
• Issue
• Pull request
• GitHub-flavoured markdown

On top of its version control and collaboration capabilities, GitHub also offers a number of other features that make it useful for project management.

Issues help you track and discuss your to-do items.

Wikis let you construct knowledge bases.

Discussions are like online forums.

GitHub Pages let you create static websites by writing Markdown files and applying a template.

Projects help you manage projects and workflow using a project board.

If you want to learn more about any of the features this workshop covers, or any of the features this workshop does not cover, GitHub has an excellent help resource.

A GitHub repository is not an appropriate platform for rapid, live collaboration on a single document. The process of committing and reviewing changes would make it too unwieldy. For this kind of collaboration a real-time, collaborative document editor like Google Docs, Microsoft Word 365, or etherpad would be more appropriate.

Last, but not least, using a GitHub repository for a well-structured, collaborative project enables the development of FAIR outputs. We’ll be going more into this over the course of this workshop.