Skip to content

Multiple forks of the same repo in one organization

Issue idea came from: http://blog.ffwll.ch/2017/08/github-why-cant-host-the-kernel.html

Usecase

Just look at git.kernel.org, most of these repositories are not personal. And even if you might have different organizations for e.g. different subsystems, requiring an organization for each repo is silly amounts of overkill and just makes access and user managed unnecessarily painful.

In graphics for example we’d have 1 repo each for the userspace test suite, the shared userspace library, and a common set of tools and scripts used by maintainers and developers, which would work in github. But then we’d have the overall subsystem repo, plus a repository for core subsystem work and additional repositories for each big drivers. Those would all be forks, which github doesn’t do. And each of these repos has a bunch of branches, at least one for feature work, and another one for bugfixes for the current release cycle.

Combining all branches into one repository wouldn’t do, since the point of splitting repos is that pull requests and issues are separated, too.

Problem

Requiring an organization and different namespace for each repo copy/fork is overkill and just makes access and user managed unnecessarily painful.

Proposal

Make creation of multiple forks of same repository possible in one organisation (without requiring subgroups)

Value

Being able to support really large projects, with advanced git flows, like the linux kernel git workflow

CC/Call to actions

Edited by Dimitrie Hoekstra