ARCHIVED: Completed project: Github:Enterprise for IU and the CIC

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Primary UITS contact: Scott Michael

Completed: August 2, 2013

Description: Software development is an essential activity throughout the university, particularly for researchers. Also, as ubiquitous as software development projects are today, their prevalence is bound to only increase in the future. One of the key tools in any software development workflow is a robust version control system. Currently, the only university-wide offerings for version control are subversion and a Github:Enterprise pilot project offered by RT. Because of a lack of exposure to these options, many research and staff groups have deployed their own internal version control system or use some third-party hosting site. We will offer, fully support, and actively promote a source control management service, based on Github, to both Indiana University users and our Committee on Institutional Cooperation partners. Such a service would expand the ability of IU students, faculty, and staff to develop, distribute, and collaborate on software projects. This service will be delivered using the software package Github:Enterprise and will be operated by RT's Core services group.

Outcome: Deployment of a fully supported university- and CIC-wide Github:Enterprise service.

Milestones and status:

  • Shibboleth plug-in for OmniAuth to enable InCommon federation in Github
  • Deploy a federated service
  • Growth in the user community
  • Ongoing support of the Github:Enterprise service
  • Current users: 1226
  • Current repositories: 2508

Benefits: A fully supported SCM service will provide an abundance of opportunities for cross-discipline collaboration throughout the university. Through Github, researchers from any department on any of IU's campuses will be able to seamlessly share source code, collaborate on development, and search any of the public repositories for all of IU.

Related information: https://github.iu.edu

Aids achievement of the following Empowering People Actions:

  • Recommendation A1: IT infrastructure and fiscal planning. Indiana University's national and international leadership should be sustained through continued maintenance and advancement of an IT infrastructure that is supported by sound fiscal planning.
    • With Github:Enterprise as a service, IU distinguishes itself as one of the few universities to offer a comprehensive and robust source control management system to its entire population. In fact, IU has been approached by several other R1 universities soliciting advice on how to proceed with a centralized source control management system.
    • Action 5: Philosophy of abundance. IU should pursue strategies that approximate a philosophy of abundance, within reason, towards unmetered availability of basic IT services, support, and infrastructure for creative activity, storage, computation, communication, and other activities fundamental to the work of the university via any appropriate sourcing strategy.
      • Having a robust SCM system is crucial to effectively pursuing software development projects, which are a key activity throughout the university. We should, therefore, strive to provide such a service to our university constituents.
  • Recommendation B8: Human and IT co-development. Indiana University should implement a variety of approaches to IT education, skills acquisition, support, and communication that enable any willing learner to efficiently acquire desired IT skills.
    • Social coding services offer a unique perspective on the software development process. With over three million repositories, Github.com has shown that this perspective can be very compelling to a wide variety of developers. In fact, the developers that are currently using services like Github.com come from a diverse set of backgrounds, from researchers to web designers to self-taught hackers. This fact underscores that social coding services are well suited to enhance the development process for a diverse set of programmers. In addition, the toolset provided is very easy to learn and can be used by even a novice developer.
  • Recommendation B10: Enhancing student success. Indiana University should develop student-centric IT applications and systems that can contribute to student success through support of academics, administrative tasks, and student life.
    • Github:Enterprise will be offered as a tool to students who are actively engaged in software development or have an interest in software development. Such an industry standard tool will help to equip students for cutting-edge jobs in a variety of software development fields. In fact, a great number of the current users of Github:Enterprise are students.
  • Completion Status: The Github:Enterprise service has been deployed and operational for over one year and is currently serving over 1,000 users. The service has been transitioned into normal operations. Partnership with the CIC and co-development of the Shibboleth plug-in to facilitate InCommon authentication was not pursued due to a lack of interest from CIC partners and Github as well as technical challenges.

Project team:

  • Scott Michael
  • Richard Knepper
  • Robert Henschel
  • Matthew Standish

Governance: Matthew Link

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Last modified on 2018-01-18 17:18:33.