title: GitHub description: Guidelines for collaborating on projects.


A Comprehensive Guide to Collaborative Project Management

We will discuss GitHub's core features and reveal essential tips for effective project collaboration.

What is GitHub🤔

GitHub serves as the primary platform for collaboration, version control, and project management. It provides tools for tracking issues, managing tasks, and facilitating code reviews.

GitHub, for Outsoaropen in new window, is more than just a platform—it's a vibrant community hub where developers come together to build, share, and learn from one another. It serves as a central repository for code, fostering collaboration, transparency, and open-source development on a global scale.

  1. What is an issue in GitHub?

    Issues on GitHub are the lifeblood of collaboration. They offer a structured platform to discuss ideas, report bugs, and track tasks within a project. By utilizing issues, teams can prioritize work, address concerns, and keep the development process organized and transparent.

  2. What is an pull request in GitHub?

    Pull requests are the lifeblood of collaborative coding on GitHub. They empower developers to propose changes, solicit feedback, and merge contributions into the main codebase. Pull requests facilitate peer review, iteration, and continuous improvement, driving the evolution of projects with agility and precision.

    The following are the actions related to Pull requests:

  3. What is forking in GitHub?

    Forking embodies the spirit of exploration and experimentation on GitHub. It allows developers to create personal copies of repositories, enabling them to tinker, test, and innovate without disrupting the original project. Forks serve as incubators for new ideas and pathways for collaboration across diverse coding communities.

    The following are the actions related to forking:

  4. What is a branch in GitHub?

    • GitHub branches offer developers the flexibility to experiment with new features, fix bugs, and work on ideas without affecting the stability of the main codebase. They provide isolation, flexibility, and control, enabling teams to collaborate with confidence and clarity throughout the entire development process. The following are the actions related to branches:
  5. What is a project in GitHub?

    A project is a flexible group of objects that is updated with GitHub data and can be shown as a roadmap, kanban board, or table. Issues, pull requests, and ideas you jot down may all be tracked within your projects.

    You may add custom fields to track metadata unique to your team, visualize work with configurable charts, and create and modify numerous views by filtering, sorting, and grouping problems and pull requests. Instead of imposing a certain approach, a project offers adaptable features that you may tailor to the requirements and workflows of your team.

    Additionally, you have the option to use an already existing project as a template. This allows you to copy custom fields and views from the original project to a new one.

    If you need more information about this feature, please refer to the Copying an existing projectopen in new window section.

  6. What is a milestone in GitHub?

    You can link bugs and pull requests to milestones that you establish.

    You can access information about your milestone in order to better manage your project.

    • Viewable from the milestone page are:

      • An explanation of the milestone supplied by the user, which may contain details about the project's scope, pertinent teams, and anticipated completion dates
      • When is the milestone due?
      • The percentage of the milestone completed
      • The quantity of pull requests, issues, and closed issues related to the milestone
      • An inventory of the milestone's open, closed, and pull request issues
      • On the milestone page, you can also add new issues that are automatically linked to the milestone and modify the milestone itself.

      You can prioritize open issues and pull requests in a milestone by clicking to the left of an issue or pull request's checkbox, dragging it to a new location, and dropping it.

  7. What is a release in GitHub?

    Releases are versions of deployable software that you can bundle and make accessible for a larger user base to download and utilize. Git tags, which identify a certain time in the past of your repository, are the foundation for releases. Since they can be developed at various times, a tag date and a release date might disagree. Viewing your repository's releases and tags may be done by going to "Viewing your repository's releases and tags.open in new window"

    Notifications about other updates to the repository are not sent to you when new releases are published in the repository. While anyone with write credentials to a repository can only manage releases, anyone with read access can examine and compare releases.

  8. What is a wiki in GitHub?

    Every repository on GitHub.com comes equipped with a section for hosting documentation, called a wiki. You can use your repository's wiki to share long-form content about your project, such as how to use it, how you designed it, or its core principles.

    PublicPublic & Private
    GitHub FreeGitHub Pro
    GitHub Free for organizationsGitHub Team
    GitHub Enterprise Cloud
    GitHub Enterprise Server
  9. What is a GitHub page?

    GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files straight from a repository on GitHub, optionally runs the files through a build process, and publishes a website.

    Who can use this feature?

    PublicPublic & Private
    GitHub FreeGitHub Pro
    GitHub Free for organizationsGitHub Team
    GitHub Enterprise Cloud
    GitHub Enterprise Server
  10. What is a GitHub action?

    GitHub Actions is a platform that enables you to automate your build, test, and deployment pipeline. You can design workflows that build and test each pull request to your repository or that deploy merged pull requests to production. GitHub Actions is not just for DevOps; it also allows you to run workflows in response to other events that occur in your repository. For instance, you can run a workflow that adds the appropriate labels automatically whenever a new issue is created in your repository. You can host your own self-hosted runners in your own data center or cloud infrastructure.

  11. What is a GitHub Gist?

    Code snippets can be easily shared with others using gists. Since every gist is a Git repository, cloning and forking are both possible. When you create a gist, if you are logged into GitHub, the gist will be linked to your account and shown in your gist list when you visit your gist home page.

    Gists may be secret or public. Public gists appear in Discover, where users can peruse freshly made gists. You can use them if you want other people to be able to find and view your work because they are also searchable.

    Unless you are the secret gist author and are logged in, secret gists are not visible in Discover or searchable. Private gists aren't secret. A friend can view a hidden gist if you provide them the URL to it. That being said, your gist will also be visible to anyone who do not know the URL. Instead, you might wish to build a private repository if you need to keep your code hidden from inquisitive eyes.

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