How to organize and categorize small projects in GitHub?

Question

I'm new to development and trying to upload small projects that I've worked on to my GitHub profile. These projects are not dependent on each other.

My issue is that some of them are small single-file projects. Sort of like mini challenges that I've solved. So I'm thinking of grouping them together under one repo called "Python programming", for example.

Is this a good practice?

• If yes, how should I go about it in Git, and how can I still have a README file showing up for each mini project.

• If no, what would you recommend doing?

Answer 1

GitHub will render a README file for every folder you visit, so when using just a single repository, one solution would be to still create one sub folder for each “subproject” that as such can have its own README file.

But before going that route, you should think about if those small projects actually belong together. That’s ultimately what should decide whether you want to put them all in the same repository or whether you want to split it up into several repositories.

Some things to consider for that decision:

• If the projects do not depend on another, do they still relate to another? For example, are those projects part of a bigger programming challenge like Project Euler and you’re just collecting all your solutions? Then a single repository might make more sense.
• What is the chance for individual projects to grow into bigger things? Many things start very small but can eventually grow into real things that justify their own repository. At that point, you might even get others to contribute.
• Does it make sense for those individual files to share a history? Are the files even going to be edited once they are “done”? I.e. is this just a collection of finished things, or are they actually ongoing experiments?

Ultimately, it comes down to your personal choice. But GitHub, as the repository hoster, should not be driving your decision. You should create Git repositories locally as it makes sense to you. If that means you just have a single one, that’s fine. If that means you create lots of them, that’s also fine.

Unfortunately, the GitHub UI is not really made for small one-off projects. The repository list is just to unorganized for that. If you decide to use small projects, I advise you to add some prefix for categorization within your GitHub profile, so you know what this is about.

A good alternative for one-off projects, especially when it’s just a single (or a few) files are Gists. Gists are born as a way to share code snippets but under the hood, every Gist is actually a full Git repository. Of course, Gists do not offer the tools normal repositories on GitHub have (e.g. issues, pull requests, wikis). But for what you describe, you probably need neither of those. Then, Gists are a fine way to share simple things without adding full repositories to your profile. And you can still clone them (the remote URL is [email protected]:/<gist-id>.git) and have a full history and support for multiple files if you need those.

Answer 2

Commonly, you'll see that the top level of the repo contains the README file, maybe a setup.py and some other extraneous information, and perhaps a tests folder. Then there will be a folder that shares a name with the repo. Inside of that folder is the code that's intended to be core content of the module/package/script.

It's also not unusual to see different organization, particularly with very small projects of single-file scripts.

For the specific case you mention, do whatever you like. What you propose sounds totally reasonable to me. I would not want to have a separate repo for all the challenges I solve!

I usually use a gist for trivial items I don't necessarily want to make a repo for, including coding challenges. So I would offer that as an alternative. Do whatever suits you best.