Mass-administration of Github repositories

This is a collection of notes for how I manage multiple Github repositories. All repositories under my account, are managed this way.

Features

I need the following:

• Standardize repositories - when I want to push new topics, change the wording of descriptions, use new settings or disable others - I want to be able to do this for all repos now, and in the future
• Streamline Github Actions - I want to be able to publish nuget packages from all repositories, perform builds, have PR's checked and so on - in the same way. If I discover something new and exciting, I want to be able to use it on all repos in an easy manner
• Streamline repository contents - I want to use Sourcelink, xmldocs, and other fancy features in my projects - and when I discover new ones, I want to be able to use them in a general fashion.

In short, I want to template my repositories, but be able to update these templates as I go along.

Parts

This guide is split into parts, for each area. Parts:

• GH Mass-administration: Terraform
• GH Mass-administration: Content

Specification

All good things start with a specification. I've created a file, which I'll call repos.json, which will contain all the settings I want for all my repositories. It looks like this:

{
  "content": {
    "standardContent": {
      ".gitignore": "standard_content\\.gitignore"
    },
    "standardDotnetNuget": {
      ".github/workflows/dotnet.yml": "standard_content\\dotnet.yml",
      ".github/workflows/nuget.yml": "standard_content\\nuget.yml",
      "Directory.Build.props": "standard_content\\Directory.Build.props"
    },
    ...
  },
  "repositories": {
    "MBW.BlueRiiot2MQTT": {
      "description": "Utility to map between Blue Riiots pool API, and Home Assistant MQTT",
      "topics": [ "hass", "home-assistant", "mqtt", "blue-riiot", "pool" ],
      "docker": true,
      "nuget": false,
      "standardContent": true
    },
    "TMDbLib": {
      "description": "C#.Net library for TheMovieDB",
      "topics": [ "tmdb", "movies", "themoviedb" ],
      "has_wiki": true,
      "standardContent": true,
      "standardDotnetNuget": true
    },
    ...
  }
}

The file describes the name, description, topics and some custom properties I want going for all repositories. The settings like standardContent are something I've made up, and will be using in the post on managing content.

Read the followup posts for more specific approaches.