Github is the world’s largest source code host, and provides several valuable services for open source projects. Some of these features are also available from other hosting options such as Gitlab, Bitbucket and CodeCommit.

Git

Git is a distributed version control system. It tracks changes to a set of files, which could be mathematical code, a math paper or the code for a website. It provides tools for merging changes by multiple contributors, examining a project’s history, and stepping back to the version of a project a some point in the past. It is distributed in the sense that the whole project’s history is contained in every copy (for example, on your laptop if you are working on a project). Github provides a central location to serve as the main repository for a project.

Pages

Github offers free web hosting. This can provide an easy mechanism for getting a database up and running (MathBases itself uses Github Pages). It only serves static pages, but does offer built-in support for Jekyll which allows for templating when the website is deployed. It also supports custom URLs. If you prefer another templating engine to the default Liquid option that is built in to Jekyll, you can use Github actions for deployment as long as your site is static and does not require any backend code.

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