Setup new GitHub repository

Everyone at Thoth Tech has permission to create new GitHub repositories. To adhere to the Git Contribution guide, we suggest to implement the following GitHub settings:

• Delete merged branches automatically: enabled
• Access control: role-based with least privilege
• Branch protection: enabled

You can find these settings under the repository settings page.

Delete merged branches automatically

This setting helps to reduce the number of branches that are already merged to the default branch. On large repository, this improves code checkout time and reduce disk storage.

1. Go to the Settings > General page. For example, https://github.com/thoth-tech/handbook/settings.
2. Scroll down to After pull requests are merged, you can have head branches deleted automatically. setting.
3. Enable Automatically delete head branches.

Access control

To reduce accidental deletion and risk of compromised accounts, we would like to keep elevated permissions to a smallest number of individual as possible. Generally, roles are assigned as follows:

• Senior Leads: Admin
• Product & Delivery Leads: Maintain
• Developers (everyone in the organisation): Write

The administrators or repository creators can ensure the above roles assignment.

1. Go to the Settings > Access page. For example, https://github.com/thoth-tech/handbook/settings/access.
2. Select Add teams.
3. Type the team name and assign the roles as stated above.
4. Repeat for the rest of the teams.

Branch protection

We recommend feature branch strategy and Pull request workflow for code development. This ensures code quality, knowledge sharing and collaboration. Pushing to the default branch must be prohibited.

1. Go to the Settings > Branches page. For example, https://github.com/thoth-tech/handbook/settings/branches.
2. Select Add rule.
3. Type the name of the default branch in the Branch name pattern text box. For example, main.
4. Enable Require a pull request before merging.
   1. Enable Require approvals.
   2. Select Required number of approvals before merging according to the Code Review guidelines.
5. Enable Require status checks to pass before merging.
   1. Ensure Requires branches to be up to date before merging is disabled.
6. Enable Include administrators so everyone is subjected to the above rules when contributing. code to the repository.
7. Select Create.