I decided that GitHub would be a convenient place for my POV-Ray
contributions, because I would need a GitHub account anyway to lodge
complaints about the fine work being done by the POV-Ray developers.  I
could upload my Object Collection modules in one folder, my non-OC
contributions in another, and heck, maybe a third area for projects
unrelated to POV-Ray.  It would be an ideal way to centralize my
contributions, rather than having them scattered all over the news server.

I very quickly found out that GitHub does not support nested
organization!  But it does allow sub-folders, so I uploaded each module
into its own sub-folder.

But that didn't solve the problem.  GitHub has no means of downloading a
single folder; users would have to download the whole repository, even
for just one module.  I don't want to put users through that.  And
branches (and I presume forks) can only be made off the entire
repository.  Even worse, I cannot tag individual folders; the whole
repository must be tagged for every module update.  Basically, all
pretense of folders aside, all my disparate modules can only be treated
as a single unit.

It appears that the only clean way to manage modules individually is to
have a separate repository for each module, in a completely flat
structure.  This seems to me like an unwieldy way to store and publish
my projects.

I DuckDuckGo'd around to see how other people managed this problem.
Seems an awful lot of people have the same complaint.  One suggestion
was to keep repositories in "Organizations," so I looked into that.

Nope.  There is a reason I'm a broken cog who cannot make it in my field
of expertise, rather than a wealthy businessman.  I suck at
organization, and I have no management skills.  But to use a GitHub
Organization, you basically have to manage a distributed business
enterprise, complete with security and user classes!  I need a simpler
solution, one that allows any average Jo(e) to download a module without
having to login or ask me for permission.

I'm finding it very difficult to believe that people who could create
and manage such an elaborate and sophisticated enterprise such as GitHub
could have overlooked something as simple as hierarchically organized
projects!  Am I missing something?

Is there some simple way to organize repositories on GitHub?  One that
doesn't require an engineering or management degree to understand and
navigate?  Or do I have to content myself with a choice between randomly
scattered repositories and a single repository in which modules cannot
be treated modularly?

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Am 17.08.2021 um 22:33 schrieb Cousin Ricky:

> I very quickly found out that GitHub does not support nested
> organization!  But it does allow sub-folders, so I uploaded each module
> into its own sub-folder.

This is not a matter specific to GitHub, but rather the underlying 
architecture, i.e. Git.

As Git had originally been designed just to manage the source of the 
Linux kernel, support for sub-projects hadn't been part of the design goals.

However, Git seems to have since grown not just one, not two, but three 
ways of managing subprojects; see 
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SubprojectSupport for some 
introduction.

I've never had much contact with these, and only one variant so far 
(can't even recall which ones; Submodules, I think, but I can't be 
sure), so I have no recommendation which of these will suit your needs 
best. But at lest it might give you a few buzzwords for further searches 
on the internerds.

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On Tue, 17 Aug 2021 22:52:29 +0200, clipka wrote:

> I've never had much contact with these, and only one variant so far
> (can't even recall which ones; Submodules, I think, but I can't be
> sure), so I have no recommendation which of these will suit your needs
> best. But at lest it might give you a few buzzwords for further searches
> on the internerds.

Yeah, I was thinking that submodules is the way to handle this.  It's not 
too difficult to use, but does require a little work to understand it.  
(I haven't done that for years myself)

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 2021-08-17 4:52 PM (-4), clipka wrote:
> 
> As Git had originally been designed just to manage the source of the
> Linux kernel, support for sub-projects hadn't been part of the design
> goals.
> 
> However, Git seems to have since grown not just one, not two, but three
> ways of managing subprojects; see
> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SubprojectSupport for some
> introduction.

Thanks, I did see that submodule support was added to Git at some
point--it looks like around 2007-08.  The wrapper feature looks like it
would meet my online needs, but I suppose submodules could work.

The problem is that GitHub does not appear to support any of these
capabilities.  All searches on GitHub wrappers yield only repositories
of wrappers tailored for specific software, having nothing to do with
Git.  Searches on submodules yields lots of user discussion about Git
commands, but no documentation from GitHub, and no indication that
submodules are even applicable to GitHub.  I do not need or want offline
Git capabilities; I already have my projects organized locally in
folders, and to bring in an SCM would be more effort that it's worth at
this time.  I want organization on GitHub, and even if I did reorganize
my local POV-Ray directory tree to use Git, I see no indication that
this organization could be uploaded intact.

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Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> I decided that GitHub would be a convenient place for my POV-Ray
> contributions, because I would need a GitHub account anyway to lodge
> complaints about the fine work being done by the POV-Ray developers.  I
> could upload my Object Collection

That would be "Objection Collection."  :D

> I'm finding it very difficult to believe that people who could create
> and manage such an elaborate and sophisticated enterprise such as GitHub
> could have overlooked something as simple as hierarchically organized
> projects!  Am I missing something?

Didn't Microsoft / Bill "Gates of Hell" gobble that up?

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hi,

Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> ... organize repositories ...

not sure if this describes you(r situation), from the fossil docs: "ii. Single
developer with multiple subprojects"

<https://www.fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/whyusefossil.wiki>


regards, jr.

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Am 18.08.2021 um 00:17 schrieb Cousin Ricky:

> The problem is that GitHub does not appear to support any of these
> capabilities.  All searches on GitHub wrappers yield only repositories
> of wrappers tailored for specific software, having nothing to do with
> Git.  Searches on submodules yields lots of user discussion about Git
> commands, but no documentation from GitHub, and no indication that
> submodules are even applicable to GitHub.  I do not need or want offline
> Git capabilities;

While the GitHub web interface alone may be sufficient for an occasional 
small contribution here and there (by now; even that hadn't always been 
the case) in which only a single file is changed; but for anything 
beyond that, I'd really recommend using a proper Git UI on your machine 
(which may just be the `git` command-line interface, or a 3rd party 
GUI), which (by Git's design) invariably also means a having local 
repository.

Of course not all UIs support advanced Git features, but the more 
advanced ones go far beyond what GitHub has implemented in their web 
interface (or their own rudimentary Git UI called GitHub Desktop)

My favorite tool of choice is Atlassian Sourcetree (from the folks 
behind BitBucket, an alternative to GitHub), which does seem to support 
both submodules and subtrees (you can add a new submodule or subtree 
from the GUI).

> I already have my projects organized locally in
> folders, and to bring in an SCM would be more effort that it's worth at
> this time.

An SCM is exactly what Git is, so I'm rather puzzled?!


> I want organization on GitHub, and even if I did reorganize
> my local POV-Ray directory tree to use Git, I see no indication that
> this organization could be uploaded intact.

If you "upload" the stuff (or "commit" and "push", as the technical 
terms would be) using some arbitrary Git interface that supports 
submodules/subtrees, that hierarchy _will_ end up intact on the GitHub repo.

Whether that hierarchy is also exposed to the user is another matter; 
but I recommend that you see for yourself.

Here's an example of how GitHub themselves use _submodules_ in one of 
their own projects, `linguist`, a tool they use to detect the 
programming language of files in a repository; each folder in its 
`vendor/grammars` directory is actually a submodule:

https://github.com/github/linguist/tree/master/vendor/grammars

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On 2021-08-18 4:44 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
> Am 18.08.2021 um 00:17 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
> 
>> [...]  I do not need or want offline
>> Git capabilities;
> 
> While the GitHub web interface alone may be sufficient for an occasional
> small contribution here and there (by now; even that hadn't always been
> the case) in which only a single file is changed; but for anything
> beyond that, I'd really recommend using a proper Git UI on your machine
> (which may just be the `git` command-line interface, or a 3rd party
> GUI), which (by Git's design) invariably also means a having local
> repository.

Would I have to uproot my existing local directory tree?

>> I already have my projects organized locally in
>> folders, and to bring in an SCM would be more effort that it's worth at
>> this time.
> 
> An SCM is exactly what Git is, so I'm rather puzzled?!

I mean I don't need an SCM on my local machine.  I vaguely recall having
to use one on the job many years ago, and I seem to have spent as much
time wrestling with the SCM as I did writing code.  They confuse the
hell out of me, which would seem to defeat their own purpose.

>> I want organization on GitHub, and even if I did reorganize
>> my local POV-Ray directory tree to use Git, I see no indication that
>> this organization could be uploaded intact.
> 
> If you "upload" the stuff (or "commit" and "push", as the technical
> terms would be) using some arbitrary Git interface that supports
> submodules/subtrees, that hierarchy _will_ end up intact on the GitHub
> repo.
> 
> Whether that hierarchy is also exposed to the user is another matter;
> but I recommend that you see for yourself.

The user's view is precisely what I'm concerned about.

> Here's an example of how GitHub themselves use _submodules_ in one of
> their own projects, `linguist`, a tool they use to detect the
> programming language of files in a repository; each folder in its
> `vendor/grammars` directory is actually a submodule:
> 
> https://github.com/github/linguist/tree/master/vendor/grammars

That looks like what I'm looking for.  How do I actually do it?  Is
there a gentle introduction somewhere to how it's done, because GitHub
has only the barest tutorial on how to use its UI, and everything else I
can find, whether in GitHub's docs, GitHub's blog, or third party
instructions, just dumps me into the deep end of the pool.  I seem to
lack an overall conceptual framework of what's going on.

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On 2021-08-18 4:44 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
> 
> My favorite tool of choice is Atlassian Sourcetree (from the folks
> behind BitBucket, an alternative to GitHub), which does seem to support
> both submodules and subtrees (you can add a new submodule or subtree
> from the GUI).

The Web page that recommended GitHub Organizations pointed this out, but
also said that BitBucket's UI was more complicated another Git UI (which
I can't recall at the moment).

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Am 18.08.2021 um 18:58 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
> On 2021-08-18 4:44 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
>>
>> My favorite tool of choice is Atlassian Sourcetree (from the folks
>> behind BitBucket, an alternative to GitHub), which does seem to support
>> both submodules and subtrees (you can add a new submodule or subtree
>> from the GUI).
> 
> The Web page that recommended GitHub Organizations pointed this out, but
> also said that BitBucket's UI was more complicated another Git UI (which
> I can't recall at the moment).

One thing you really should try to get off your mind is the idea that 
Git repository hosting service == Git desktop user interface.

Those really are two _entirely_ different things.

You can use Atlassian's desktop user interface (Sourcetree) with a 
repository hosted on GitHub. Just like you can use GitHub Inc.'s desktop 
user interface (called GitHub Desktop) with a repository hosted on 
BitBucket (or at least you should be; I haven't actually tested it).

I never liked the web interface of Atlassian's "BitBucket" Git/Mercurial 
reposiory hosting service.

I do like Atlassian's "Sourcetree" Git/Mercurial desktop UI.

I do like the web interface of GitHub Inc.'s "GitHub" repository hosting 
service (even though I agree that there's still quite some room for 
improvement).

I don't like GitHub Inc.'s "GitHub Desktop" desktop UI at all.

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