Organize editing team, collaboration and visibility

Organize editing team, collaboration and visibility#

Roles and responsibilities#

To ensure smooth collaboration, it is essential to define the roles and responsibilities within your team. Firstly, designate who will be in charge of team organization (‘administrators’) who should be at least user type 4. Additionally, assign ‘maintainers’ responsible for combining content, also requiring at least user type 4. ‘Editors’ should be identified for editing and reviewing content, requiring at least user type 3.

Finally, ensure that team members identify themselves according to the user types. It is crucial to have at least one user type 4 or 5 on the team. While this role can be filled by a teaching assistant (TA), it is recommended that one of the teachers is also comfortable with this user type to provide adequate support and oversight.

Review process#

Furthermore, establish a clear editing and review process.

For the editing process, establish some practical rules on whether to use issues, branches and forks for adding content, fixing typos or making other changes. Furthermore, it can help to write down when you expect (draft) merge/pull requests and how to use the assign and review options in GitHub/GitLab. It is advisable to have at least a maintainer review each piece of content to maintain quality and consistency. Provide explanation on how you organize the book-editing and how you’d like to receive feedback in both the readme as the published book. The use of the repository button , suggest edit and issue button is advised.

Define draft version of book#

If there’s many people working on different parts of the book and material is staged for publication to students, we recommend using at least two separate branches, one which is released to students, the other one for development. Using the Releasing book online, it’s very easy to share multiple versions of your book on the same root-URL.

Firstly, create a release branch which contains the students’ version of this year. This branch could be named release, main, or <current academic year>. It is recommended to set this branch as the PRIMARY BRANCH when using the GitHub workflow. This ensures that students are redirected to a consistent URL, even when new versions of the book are added later. If you plan on maintaining only one public version, it is advisable to set BEHAVIOR_PRIMARY from the default redirect to copy. This ensures that the primary branch is copied to the root, making the URL more compact.

Next, establish a development branch that contains all the new content combined but not yet published to students. This branch could be named dev, main, <current academic year>-draft. Using dev is recommended if you prefer the default branch to be the most recent published version, as main is commonly expected to be the default branch.

We advise you to enable two options in the general repository setting regarding pull requests in GitHub:

  • Enable Always suggest updating pull request branches, suggesting a merge from the default branch into any separate branch before merging into the default branch.

  • Enable Automatically delete head branches to delete branches after they are merged (you’ll still be able to restore those).

Book previews of contributions#

Using the Releasing book online, it’s very easy to show a preview of the changes for branches within the same repository. Using Build pull requests from forks you allow previews of changes for forks of your repository too.

Add the way you organized branches and builds in your README.

Protect branches#

To ensure the integrity of your book’s content, it is crucial to set up protected branches in both GitHub and GitLab. Protected branches prevent accidental changes and ensure that only authorized modifications are made. In GitHub, you can configure branch protection rules by navigating to the repository settings, selecting “Branches,” and then adding branch protection rules for the branches you want to protect. Similarly, in GitLab, you can protect branches by going to the repository settings, selecting “Repository,” and then configuring the branch protection settings.

Once the branches are protected, it is advised to assign appropriate permissions to team members based on their roles. In GitHub, you can manage permissions by navigating to the repository settings, selecting “Manage access,” and then inviting collaborators with specific roles such as “Admin,” “Write,” or “Read.” In GitLab, permissions can be managed by going to the project settings, selecting “Members,” and then adding users with roles like “Maintainer,” “Developer,” or “Reporter.”

Additionally, it is advisable to document the branch protection strategy and the assigned permissions in the readme file. This documentation should explain the rationale behind the branch protection rules and provide clear instructions on how team members can request access or permission changes. By doing so, you create a transparent and organized workflow that facilitates collaboration and minimizes the risk of unauthorized changes. We would advise a ruleset:

  • Bypassable by repository admins

  • Targeting default branch

  • Restrict deletions

  • Require a pull request before merging with 1 required approval

  • Block force pushes

Private, internally or public#

Choose whether you want to share your source code and built book privately, internally or publicly. In any case, you need to obey copyright-rules. We advise public repositories and books in line with a vision on open education.

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