Guidelines for GitHub use

Repository Naming Conventions

Consolidating into two organizations introduces naming competition and potential namespace collisions. Please name every repository to clearly communicate ownership, readability, and consistency within the organization. We propose everyone conform to the following convention when naming repositories:

  • The repository name should use all lowercase letters
  • Separate words using dashes (-)
  • The first word should describe your college or division, such as your 4-letter abbreviation (i.e. clen-, or arch-)
  • The second (or more) word(s) should describe your working group, such as department or research lab (i.e. viz- or chem-)
  • Use the rest of the name to describe the repository with high specificity (i.e. -a-very-specific-rest-service vs -rest-service)

Repository Visibility

GitHub Enterprise has three levels of repository visibility:

  • Public repositories are visible to the internet.
  • Internal repositories are visible to members of the Enterprise (anyone with a Texas A&M NetID).
  • Private repositories are only visible to those with direct access.

The student organization allows repositories of any visibility level.

The institutional organization allows new repositories at any visibility level. Changes to existing repositories from internal or private to public will be blocked and reverted. The owner of a private repository can submit a ticket or pull request to grant their visibility change.

Backup, Reliability, and Disaster Recovery

Texas A&M’s GitHub Enterprise Cloud service relies on GitHub’s vendor-hosted SaaS platform, including GitHub’s published service availability commitments, reliability practices, and disaster recovery/business continuity controls. Repository owners may review GitHub’s official Trust Center and service-level documentation for current commitments and details:

Repository-Level Backups

Individual repository backup outside of GitHub’s vendor-hosted SaaS-provided capabilities is the responsibility of the repository owner. Repository owners who require independent backups should use GitHub-supported methods, such as cloning, mirroring, or duplicating repositories, as described in GitHub’s official documentation:

Backup copies must be protected in accordance with applicable Texas A&M University data handling, security, retention, and compliance requirements.

Using Git and GitHub

If you are new to Git or GitHub, the Get Started with GitHub guide is a great place to start. More advanced users are encouraged to check out the documentation for the advanced features at GitHub Docs.

Some additional resources to learn Git and GitHub:

Additional Resources