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gitgithubmetadatastandardsfile-format

Is there a standard format to store metadata of a repository?

Is there a standard method or format to mirror repository metadata?

For example, a Github repository may have specified

  • short description
  • website
  • list of Github tags (displayed below description, see image below)

This data is edited using Github interface and not stored in a git repository.

I want to change it for my projects to keep also this part of my data backuped, reduce Github lockin and make potential migration easier.

I searched for and failed to find any proposed/used format for that data. I prefer to avoid reinventing the wheel, so I am asking here whatever there is any standard way to do that.

To clarify tags: it is not about git tags, but about Github tags. For example https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website has openstreetmap, rails-application and ruby Github tags.

enter image description here

Solution

  • Is there a standard method or format to mirror repository metadata?

    There is no. But there are a few widely used conventions.

    short description

    Edit .git/description. Most self-hosted solutions (I use git-web) display its content as the description.

    website

    Put it into a README file. README.txt or README.md or README.rst.

    list of Github project tags

    No, topics are really github-specific, and every other solution implements them in its own way. As a Python programmer I use keywords in setup.py; just an example of how different it could be.