June 14, 2013

Github for science: anyone played with these yet?

If you've written any amount of code beyond "Hello, world" you are probably familiar with the idea of version control systems. The idea is simple: you use a piece of software to keep track of changes that you've made to your code. If you are working on a complex project involving multiple people, using a VCS is likely the only way to efficiently manage the project.

If you're working on a project with a collaborator, there is no need to be in the same location as each other if you are both able to access the shared space where your files can be indexed by the VCS.  Most VCS make it trivial to work with others via cloud-based services.

One VCS that is popular is called git.  There is a web service called GitHub where coders who use git can check-in their code and collaborate with others. And, although there are people and organizations starting to use GitHub for non-software projects, there are GitHub-like clones popping up for specialized fields.

Two in particular have caught my eye for scientific research projects: SciGit and Banyan. Both of these sites are pretty new, and they both seem to have roughly the same idea: a service for scientists to collaborate on projects with version control without having to learn a lot about git itself.

I'm interested to know if anyone out there has looked at these sites or tried them out.

2 comments:

Admin said...

Hi Drew,

Im one of the cofounders of Banyan & Im happy to answer any questions you might have!

I believe the mission of scigit & banyan is the same, but our products have some notable differences:

* We allow full git repos to be uploaded to Banyan
* We are building a full featured, web based editor to write your papers. More on that here: https://banyan.co/publish
* We have project management tools built in to the platform.
* We have public profiles to share your work: https://banyan.co/toni-gemayel

I hope that helps answer some of the questions surrounding our platform. Please dont hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions/thoughts on Banyan. You can reach me at toni (at) banyan.co

Admin said...

Hi Drew,

Im one of the cofounders of Banyan & Im happy to answer any questions you might have!

I believe the mission of scigit & banyan are the same, but our products have some notable differences:

* We allow full git repos to be uploaded to Banyan
* We are building a free, web based editor to write your papers. More on that here: https://banyan.co/publish
* We have project management tools built into the platform.
* We have public profiles to share your work: https://banyan.co/toni-gemayel

I hope that helps answer some of the questions surrounding Banyan. Please dont hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions/thoughts on Banyan, I would love to hear from you! You can reach me at toni (at) banyan.co