Cascade Server Code Party with Github
Ross Williams, Services Trainer, Hannon Hill
Hannon Hill clients have long worked with each other to learn and create better Cascade Server solutions. E-mail, list-servs, and forum postings have been the tools of choice for many years, and everyone is familiar with the challenges of searching list and forum archives for the one idea, mentioned five years ago, that solves the problem today. GitHub solves this problem by making the history of a project publicly visible via a great web interface to the Git version control system.
GitHub is a "social coding" site that allows Hannon Hill team members and clients alike to collaborate on Cascade Server best practices. Ideas don't have to be stuck in a code snippet in someone's inbox. GitHub allows Hannon Hill team members and clients to work together on projects like the Cascade Server Firefox Extension and SOAP Web Services scripts for migrating content from one Cascade Server instance to another.
GitHub provides a middle ground between the free-for-all of a wiki and the one-way communication of a downloads site. On GitHub, anyone can "fork" a project and suggest changes (or a major overhaul) via a "push request" to the project's owner, who can approve or offer feedback before incorporating the changes into the main project. GitHub also has other great features like Gist, a beefed-up code snippet sharing service that allows for an ad-hoc conversation to be immediately converted into a project that anyone can become a contributor to.