Repositories

Guide to creating and managing Q-CTRL repositories

Source code created at Q-CTRL is managed using Git repositories. Q-CTRL uses GitHub to host these repositories.

Types of repositories

The type of repository created defines the default configurations that are set as well as some of the naming conventions. There are two types of repositories:

1. Standard repositories
2. Research repositories

Standard repositories

Standard repositories are the default repository type, and they usually contain source code that directly contributes to Q-CTRL’s products. This can refer (but is not limited) to:

• Applications
• Configurations
• Documentation
• Infrastructure
• Software

Standard repositories have strict requirements regarding access control as well as configurations to ensure a higher standard of code quality.

Research repositories

Research repositories have less strict configurations than standard repositories and are usually used for research purposes (including spikes). As research repositories are held to a lower standard, they cannot contain source code that directly contributes to Q-CTRL’s products. A research repository MUST be correctly configured before it can become a standard repository. It is also prohibited from using any CI/CD tooling.

Naming repositories

Refer to repository naming conventions.

Repository descriptions

Repository descriptions MUST take the form <emoji> <project name> (see project naming conventions).

Examples

Ownership of repositories

All repositories MUST have at least one owner. An owner MUST be a team and not an individual person. Teams are defined by Q-CTRL’s organization structure.

A repository MAY have more than one owner and ownership of the repository can refer to:

• All code in the repository.
• A folder.
• A file.

For example, for a GraphQL project, the Back-end Engineering team may own the API code, the Front-end Engineering team may own the GraphQL schemas defined in a folder, and the Infrastructure team may own certain CI files.

Repository visibility

All repositories MUST be private unless there is a reason to make them public. Some reasons that a repository would be made public include:

• The repository contains an open source project.
• The repository needs to be publicly viewable by people outside of the Q-CTRL organization.
• The repository is a fork of another public repository.

Creating, modifying, and archiving repositories

Repositories are controlled using the Q-CTRL Repositories Manager. This is in accordance with Q-CTRL’s Operations security policy and is integral to Q-CTRL’s ISO/IEC 27001 compliance.

IMPORTANT: Any repositories created outside of the Q-CTRL Repositories Manager will be automatically and permanently deleted. This action is not reversible.

Creating and modifying repositories

See Modifying access and creating new repositories in GitHub.

Archiving repositories

See archiving a repository.

Configuration

All repositories MUST use the common configuration. If the repository is a standard repository, then it MUST also use the standard repository configuration.

Common configuration

Standard repository configuration