What is version control?
The class of systems that assists software developers in tracking and managing changes in computer programs, websites, documents, or other data is known as version control. Developers continually make improvements and modifications to the code of a software after creating it. With each update, they come up with a new version of the initial officially released code of the software.
The role of version control systems is to maintain these version updates by storing the changes in a central repository, which is a location where all the files for a specific project are stored. This process makes it easier to collaborate on the versions. They can download versions from the repository, make changes to them, and re-upload the new version they've created. To keep track, these changes stored in the repository can be viewed by other developers at any time.
What is "Git"?
As the name suggests, Git is the version control system upon which GitHub is based. Git is an open-source system created by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, in 2005. (At that time, it started as a command-line tool in the Linux kernel.)
Git is more specifically a distributed version control system. It manages software versions much like other version control systems, using a central repository. The difference is that Git, as a distributed system, makes the repository available on every user's computer. This means that users employing distributed version control essentially maintain a copy of the central repository by cloning it to their own machine.
- This system operates in a way that allows users to first make changes to their own local copies and then record these changes on the central server.
- This process makes it easier to work with more detailed modifications, as each time a user wants to make a change, there's no need to establish a connection to the server to do so.
What is the GitHub Enterprise environment?
In order to unify Deltares source code management, it has been decided that for projects where Deltares is leading, cloud-based GitHub Enterprise is the first choice. (For those projects where there is a good reason not to use GitHub, we set up an on-premises GitLab Professional environment)
In GitHub Enterprise, colleagues will be able to log in with their Deltares accounts. This enables Deltares to take ownership of resources, such as repositories, packages, and projects. Furthermore, GitHub Enterprise provides the ability to manage policies and delivers significantly higher levels of support and additional controls for security, compliance, and deployment. We aim to gradually and systematically move everything currently running on the free versions of GitHub into the paid version.
For colleagues that are already using Github, not much will change. They will only be required to perform an additional login when accessing their repositories in the Deltares Github organizations.
The Deltares organisation structure in GitHub
Within the Deltares Github Enterprise environment there are two 'organizations':
- Deltares: This organization is meant to house all repositories linked to the Deltares's flag ship products. These repositories are expected to be in a 'sellable' state and fall under some form of 'support & maintenance'.
- Deltares-research: This organization is meant to house all other repositories. This includes project repositories, proof-of-concepts or software under development.
Once the 'state' of a repository changes, it can be moved to a different organization.
Get started using GIT
A good place to get started with learning about GIT is here: https://git-scm.com/
Contact
If you wish to request a repository you can do so through the link:
Request a repository
If you have a general question regarding Github or want to request an account then use the form here:
Submit a question
Alternatively the Github Support team can be reached by e-mail: github.support@deltares.nl
Questions regarding co-creation
Questions relating to migration
Questions relating to applications
When coding software / running models / creating extensive configurations, your code space / project folder / configurations will most likely contain a mix of text files, data files and software binaries. All these files need to be place in a repository under version control and need to be managed as a whole. For the text files you will want to be able to compare differences between versions, in order to understand what has changed over time. This will not be the case for binary files or very large data files as humans are generally not well equipped to compare bits and bytes.
In the 'past' SVN was an ideal place to store your whole repository in one place. Currently SVN is in the process of being phased out and as a replacement GITHUB has been introduced. What the advantages / disadvantages of both systems are will not be discussed here. Instead we will focus on how to setup your GITHUB repository to include both your text based files as your larger binaries.
The problem with GIT (and therefor also GITHUB) is that it is not designed to handle large and or binary files. To overcome this problem GIT Large File Storage (LFS) was introduced. The basic idea behind GIT LFS is that the actual binary file is not stored in your GITHUB repository. Instead only a reference to this file is stored. The actual binary file is stored in an Object Storage location (S3 bucket).
Although GITHUB offers LFS out-of-the-box, using it's own cloud base storage facilities, Deltares has chosen not to use this. The reason being the costs involved in storing data on the servers of GITHUB and also the costs involved in up- and downloading data to and from these servers. Instead Deltares has chosen to host it's own Object Storage in the form of a MinIO server.
So in short. You will have a GIT repository in one of the two Deltares GITHUB organizations; Deltares or Deltares-research, which will contain only your text base files and small data files. While your large files or binary files will be stored on the Deltares Minio server.
To manage all your text-, large- and binary files as a single project you have three options to connect your GITHUB repository to the Deltares MinIO object store:
Prerequisite: In the below guides we expect the user to have a basic understanding of GIT and its related commands.
How to setup GIT-LFS?
How to setup DVC?
How to setup custom scripts?
Choosing between the above solutions
If you need to contact someone regarding GitHub then you can do the following:
- Submit a question: Goto submit
- Send an email to the GitHub owners group: github-owners@deltares.nl
- Send an email to the GitHub support group: github.support@deltares.nl
Please provide the following information:
Repository name: The name of your repository
Description: A short description of this repository
Repository visibility: Public, Internal or Private
Coding language: Java, C#, Python, Other (please specify)
If user groups are required:
- Group (Team) name
- Role: Read, Triage, Write, Maintain or Admin
Organization:
- Deltares: Only for sellable software which is linked to a PMT (please select value in PMT field below.)
- Deltares-research: All other repositories.
Product Owner: Repository administrator
Product: Which software product or suite does this repository relate to
PMT: Select project management team if repository is linked to one (defaults to 'General')
If you require a Minio bucket provide additional information:
Large File Store : Yes / No
Expected storage capacity: ? MB/GB
Project number: Required for billing
storage capacity (TB) |
€ / month |
---|---|
0 - 0,5 | Free |
0,5 - 1 | € 100 |
1 - 2 | € 200 |
2 - 5 | € 500 |
5 - 10 | €100 |
>10 | please contact ICT |
Do you have a question regarding GitHub or one of the repositories, then please provide the following information:
Summary: Brief description
Description:
Post your question here. Be precise and provide any information that can be helpful to our team.
Attachment: If required add an attachment
Before you post your question, have you checked our Frequently Asked Questions section?