GitHub - Collaborating from the same cloned repository

Question

I realize this question/request seems very odd and actually seems to be counter-intuitive to what code-versioning is, but I was just wondering if it was possible.

Essentially I have a repository that I've been using on by myself to track my code changes. Specifically, there a sub-folder representing different projects. Each sub-folder/sub-project has a script folders containing scripts pertaining specifically to that project.

This setup (maybe not ideal) has worked nicely for myself purely to track my own code changes. Now I have some collaborators who want to work out of this repositories. The issue is that each project is highly dependent on data that are associated with them. So the scripts only work when the data is in the project folder.

In the ideal sense, everyone would clone the repositories into whatever area of the file system they want. But then they would have to somehow either copy all the data into the projects or make symbolic links. This seems like an hassle. I was thinking maybe we could all just work out of my cloned repository, make changes and then commit them. But the issue is that they would have commit under my username correct? Or would they be able to commit under there username?

I apologize as they will likely be a very poorly designed work of collaborating. So I am open to suggestions too.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Everyone can commit under whatever name they want. Access control kicks in when you try to push to Github. If you cannot setup accounts for them there, they can send their commits as bundles to you first (by email).

The most common practice is that each contributor has his own repo to commit to, and someone merges the changes back to the central master (and changes to the master also get pulled back into the individual repos).