Should individual git repositories be created for sub directories on a web site, or is it possible to branch them individually?

Question

I've got a web site that contains a set of effectively independent tools with each tool having its own directory. For example:

/webroot /webroot/tool-1 /webroot/tool-2 /webroot/tool-3

Development for each tool takes place individually, so being able to create different branches at different times for each is imperative.

I'm looking at moving to Git for version control and from what I've gathered from the documentation, the best bet would be to create one git repository for each of the tools. I'm curious though, if there is a way (and more to the point, if it's advisable) to have a single repository at the webroot level but still maintain the sub level tool-# directories in an independent manner.

(Note: The main reason I'm interested in this is because I'm looking at purchasing a private space on GitHub. If everything can easily and effectively go under one repository without causing a maintenance nightmare I would be able to utilize a less expensive plan than if I had to create one repo for each of the fifteen or so tools.)

Answer 1

They should be in separate repositories. However, you could probably manage something similar, without much of a maintenance headache, by placing them all in the same repository, but doing development on each tool in its own branch.

So, for example, check everything in at once and then create branches "tool1", "tool2", ...

Developers work on those branches. In fact, if you start with an empty repository and create the branches from there, you could separate the tools completely from each other, but retain the ability to merge them together if you ever wanted to.

Answer 2

I'd say it depends on whether the individual tool directories are truly independent, or if they're interrelated in some way. In Git, it's usually best to have a separate repository for each individual, independent project. In the case of your website, if each tool is independent, I'd make a separate repo -- but if they share any code between them, you might want to use just one repo.

Of course, nothing in Git prevents you from having a single repo; it might make the history of changes a bit more complicated, but that's the only major downside. And deploying to your website's production server might even be easier with a single repo.

Your situation is also complicated a bit by the use of private repos on GitHub, since, as you say, you'll need a more expensive plan if you have a separate repo for each tool. I guess you'll have to balance the economics of the situation with the technical issues involved in having a single or multiple repos.

Answer 3

You can do arbitrary splitting and merging of repositories with the git subtree tool.