(2023-05-12) Git Branching And Pull Requests For Collaborative Writing

Peter Kaminski on Git Branching and Pull Requests for Collaborative Writing (group email). I can sense that there will be growing need for collaborative work on agreements, most of which will live on the Lionsberg Wiki and therefore be in markdown. We have been using HackMD for collaboration - is there a way to track and comment on changes?

For simple cases, HackMD has features to view changes between versions. Versions are automatically created at intervals, or you can create a named version at any time

HackMD also has commenting on the current version

In practice, I think that those HackMD features won’t support change management of any reasonable complexity. For supercharged collaborative editing, including fine-grained commenting and control of changes, I recommend doing what software developers do: use Git branches and GitHub (or other Git forge) pull requests.

Git branching is a core functionality of Git, but by itself it doesn’t create collaboration; there also needs to be a codified social practice within the team about how the team members use the functionality. These practices and conventions are called “branching strategies”.

GitHub Flow” is a simple and straightforward branching strategy, and probably about what you want

For more complicated projects, Git-Flow is another well-known model

Here is an overview article about branching strategies

I would love love love if more people, especially non-technical people, knew how to work together in these supercharged practices, and I’m willing to commit time and energy to help make that happen