5 ms·

GitHub adds support for nested organization teams

143 points by scrollaway 9y ago

masklinn 9y ago
> If your team structure is Employees > Engineering > Application Engineering > Identity, granting Engineering write access to a repository means Application Engineering and Identity also get that access. Finally. > Membership inheritance from parent to child teams isn't automatic. If you're a member of Engineering and someone creates a child team called Security, team members of Engineering aren't automatically direct team members of Security. Ok that was worded weirdly, but it makes sense. I think the wording of "parent" and "child" teams is confusing, "super" and "sub" teams is much clearer, and it makes perfect sense that when you create a subteam it starts empty, the opposite would be completely broken since the entire point of subteams would be to increase access rights. One thing they did not touch upon though: can you be a member of a team and one of its subteams? (that would be somewhat annoying).
- greglindahl 9y ago
  That's the usual meaning of parent and child in computer science.
  - ChristianBundy 9y ago
    Correct, but we usually use it to mean categorical inheritance rather than membership inheritance.
    - farnsworth 9y ago
      What's the difference? An object in a category is a member of that category, right?
dustinarmstrong 9y ago
I'm excited to try this out but I wonder how much complexity it will add to managing specific individuals. If you assigned a team, then needed to remove one person will it require you to remove the entire team then add individuals again?
- NadaAldahleh 9y ago
  Nada from GitHub here. You can remove/add people to the team without removing their parent team. Does that answer your question?
  - dustinarmstrong 9y ago
    Yea, that's clear enough. I think this feature just doesn't apply to our use case. Excited to see the growth though. Thanks.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
This is awesome. Now, if only you could have a hierarchy of organizations. If you have a large company, it'd be helpful to have github.com/companyname/someinitiative/{project,project2,anotherproject} , rather than a single organization containing hundreds of projects.
- kiliankoe 9y ago
  Would be nice, but the URL scheme would have to be different. A lot of tooling builds on top of GitHub's user/org and repo identifiers making up the entire URL.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    A different separator would be fine. org:team/project , for instance? Even using the same org/project URLs would work fine, if some means existed to organize them by team.
maaaats 9y ago
I'd like to have nested projects as well. For instance I want one top-level having my talks, and then sub projects for each talk. Now I either have to clutter my repos with many small projects, or have one big repo with many folders. Which I don't like, as issues, comments, stars etc. should be directed directly to the talk, not a big project. Other top level projects would be one for various PoCs, learning different languages, programming competitions, maybe one for stuff I did at university etc. Same for organizations, where I work we now have hundreds of repos in a flat structure. Impossible to manage.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zwerdlds 9y ago
  What about submodules or subtrees doesn't fit this use case?
- deathanatos 9y ago
  https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/49 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/49 — I'd give it an upvote, and if you haven't yet, an email to GitHub support. (I'd like hierarchical repos for both users and orgs.)
jamesdo_0 9y ago
Can you not filter open PRs by team? Can you not assign teams to PRs?
- masklinn 9y ago
  Github teams are only for access control to projects within an organisation.
danielsamuels 9y ago
I wish the team permissions system was better. I'd love to be able to give developers write access to the code, but issue writers only access to the issues system.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Indeed! Granular permissions are direly lacking on Github. That and better Project boards.
usuallybaffled 9y ago
I would like to organize my repositories into folders. Is that coming?
batbomb 9y ago
If anyone in github is listening: Can you please add: 1. Bulk team adding/editing. From https://github.com/orgs/[org]/people https://github.com/orgs/[org]/people, add the ability to select multiple people and add them on a team. I do this via a script, but I don't like doing it that way. Also, a better way of finding who is NOT in a specific team, i.e. filter by users who are not in the "staff" team. 2. A special team which has everyone in it by default 3. A way of contacting everyone in a team without resorting to adding everyone to a specific team, giving that team write access, creating an issue and/or @mentioning everyone.
- masklinn 9y ago
  You probably want to mail support@github.com if you have feature requests for them.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Why do we have to be grateful like serfs for any favors the masters bequeath to us? Git is decentralized. Why do you need github? Everything can be summed up with the word "social". Permissions, connections between people, notifications, contacts, etc etc. Social is not decentralized today. Even though money already is, publishing is, version control is. That's the reason we accept such posts as "wow thanks". Imagine if something like Wordpress existed which let you run your own social network and easily put together the exact permission rules you need for your organization. Let you do everything in that post, but open source and free w plugins? I thought back in 2011 there should be something like this. So I'm building it: https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform Don't beg, just install it and configure your own social network to do what your organization needs.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Frankly, the hostility in your post just puts me off trying your platform. Learn from http://harmful.cat-v.org http://harmful.cat-v.org - try adding some humor. Decentralized or not, someone has to actually build the features, and that's still a reason to thank them. A framework is cool and all, but doesn't actually solve the problem, it just makes the job easier.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mLuby 9y ago
Obligatory reference to Conway's Law: "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations" -https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conway%27s_law https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conway%27s_law
- encoderer 9y ago
  Which I've always read as a paraphrase of Churchill: 'First we shape our structures, thereafter they shape us.'
JetSpiegel 9y ago
Doesn't Gitlab had this for ages? What is the value-add of Github this days, really? I mean for companies, why pay for github when you can have an internal gitlab instance?
- sytse 9y ago
  We added sub groups in GitLab 9.0 on March 22 https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/22/gitlab-9-0-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/22/gitlab-9-0-released/
hamandcheese 9y ago
"Could this be a tree, or graph?" is a great question to ask yourself when choosing how to model your schema. Even if you don't plan to expose that to users initially.

143 points by scrollaway 9y ago

> If your team structure is Employees > Engineering > Application Engineering > Identity, granting Engineering write access to a repository means Application Engineering and Identity also get that access. Finally. > Membership inheritance from parent to child teams isn't automatic. If you're a member of Engineering and someone creates a child team called Security, team members of Engineering aren't automatically direct team members of Security. Ok that was worded weirdly, but it makes sense. I think the wording of "parent" and "child" teams is confusing, "super" and "sub" teams is much clearer, and it makes perfect sense that when you create a subteam it starts empty, the opposite would be completely broken since the entire point of subteams would be to increase access rights. One thing they did not touch upon though: can you be a member of a team and one of its subteams? (that would be somewhat annoying).

greglindahl 9y ago
That's the usual meaning of parent and child in computer science.
- ChristianBundy 9y ago
  Correct, but we usually use it to mean categorical inheritance rather than membership inheritance.
  - farnsworth 9y ago
    What's the difference? An object in a category is a member of that category, right?

dustinarmstrong 9y ago

I'm excited to try this out but I wonder how much complexity it will add to managing specific individuals. If you assigned a team, then needed to remove one person will it require you to remove the entire team then add individuals again?

NadaAldahleh 9y ago
Nada from GitHub here. You can remove/add people to the team without removing their parent team. Does that answer your question?
- dustinarmstrong 9y ago
  Yea, that's clear enough. I think this feature just doesn't apply to our use case. Excited to see the growth though. Thanks.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

This is awesome. Now, if only you could have a hierarchy of organizations. If you have a large company, it'd be helpful to have github.com/companyname/someinitiative/{project,project2,anotherproject} , rather than a single organization containing hundreds of projects.

kiliankoe 9y ago
Would be nice, but the URL scheme would have to be different. A lot of tooling builds on top of GitHub's user/org and repo identifiers making up the entire URL.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  A different separator would be fine. org:team/project , for instance? Even using the same org/project URLs would work fine, if some means existed to organize them by team.

maaaats 9y ago

I'd like to have nested projects as well. For instance I want one top-level having my talks, and then sub projects for each talk. Now I either have to clutter my repos with many small projects, or have one big repo with many folders. Which I don't like, as issues, comments, stars etc. should be directed directly to the talk, not a big project. Other top level projects would be one for various PoCs, learning different languages, programming competitions, maybe one for stuff I did at university etc. Same for organizations, where I work we now have hundreds of repos in a flat structure. Impossible to manage.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zwerdlds 9y ago
What about submodules or subtrees doesn't fit this use case?
deathanatos 9y ago
https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/49 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/49 — I'd give it an upvote, and if you haven't yet, an email to GitHub support. (I'd like hierarchical repos for both users and orgs.)

jamesdo_0 9y ago

Can you not filter open PRs by team? Can you not assign teams to PRs?

masklinn 9y ago
Github teams are only for access control to projects within an organisation.

danielsamuels 9y ago

I wish the team permissions system was better. I'd love to be able to give developers write access to the code, but issue writers only access to the issues system.

scrollaway 9y ago
Indeed! Granular permissions are direly lacking on Github. That and better Project boards.

usuallybaffled 9y ago

I would like to organize my repositories into folders. Is that coming?

batbomb 9y ago

If anyone in github is listening: Can you please add: 1. Bulk team adding/editing. From https://github.com/orgs/[org]/people https://github.com/orgs/[org]/people, add the ability to select multiple people and add them on a team. I do this via a script, but I don't like doing it that way. Also, a better way of finding who is NOT in a specific team, i.e. filter by users who are not in the "staff" team. 2. A special team which has everyone in it by default 3. A way of contacting everyone in a team without resorting to adding everyone to a specific team, giving that team write access, creating an issue and/or @mentioning everyone.

masklinn 9y ago
You probably want to mail support@github.com if you have feature requests for them.
EGreg 9y ago
Why do we have to be grateful like serfs for any favors the masters bequeath to us? Git is decentralized. Why do you need github? Everything can be summed up with the word "social". Permissions, connections between people, notifications, contacts, etc etc. Social is not decentralized today. Even though money already is, publishing is, version control is. That's the reason we accept such posts as "wow thanks". Imagine if something like Wordpress existed which let you run your own social network and easily put together the exact permission rules you need for your organization. Let you do everything in that post, but open source and free w plugins? I thought back in 2011 there should be something like this. So I'm building it: https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform Don't beg, just install it and configure your own social network to do what your organization needs.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Frankly, the hostility in your post just puts me off trying your platform. Learn from http://harmful.cat-v.org http://harmful.cat-v.org - try adding some humor. Decentralized or not, someone has to actually build the features, and that's still a reason to thank them. A framework is cool and all, but doesn't actually solve the problem, it just makes the job easier.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mLuby 9y ago

Obligatory reference to Conway's Law: "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations" -https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conway%27s_law https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conway%27s_law

encoderer 9y ago
Which I've always read as a paraphrase of Churchill: 'First we shape our structures, thereafter they shape us.'

JetSpiegel 9y ago

Doesn't Gitlab had this for ages? What is the value-add of Github this days, really? I mean for companies, why pay for github when you can have an internal gitlab instance?

sytse 9y ago
We added sub groups in GitLab 9.0 on March 22 https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/22/gitlab-9-0-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/22/gitlab-9-0-released/

hamandcheese 9y ago

"Could this be a tree, or graph?" is a great question to ask yourself when choosing how to model your schema. Even if you don't plan to expose that to users initially.