Tidy up your GitHub account 
Tags: github
Published: 2020-11-19 09:06:21

End of the year is a designated special time. One of the things I try to do is cleaning up my GitHub account. Here's my checklist.

## Archive inactive repositories

Some people advocate deleting "unneeded" repositories. That advice was in the widely popular [GitHub is your resume now](https://anti-pattern.com/github-is-your-resume-now) post for example, and many repeated it since then.

However, if you aren't actively working on something now and/or see it as "low value", it doesn't mean you will never work on it again, or that no one is using it.

You may want to mark then as inactive by [archiving](https://github.blog/2017-11-08-archiving-repositories/) them instead. When you archive a repository, it's made read-only, and visitors see a warning that it was archived by the owner. You can un-archive it at any time later.

### ...or make them private.

Now that GitHub allows creating private repositories for free, you may want to make use of it too. If you want to keep an old project for the reference or nostalgia, but don't want it to "pollute" your GitHub profile, you can hide it from the public view instead.

## Update your pinned repositories

Whether peers and recruiters _should_ treat one's GitHub account as a resume and portfolio substitute or not is a serious question. The truth is that many people _do_ treat it as such, so how it looks to them is a real concern.

When the (in)famous "GitHub is your resume now" post was written, GitHub would only show your _most popular_ repositories on the profile page.

Luckily, GitHub developers added more ways to customize your profile page. Now you can [pin](https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/pinning-items-to-your-profile) up to six repos on the profile page. This makes having a lot of repos much less of a problem.

If that isn't enough, you can also create a profile README by creating a repository that matches your username and adding a README.md file to it.

No need to resort to book^W repository burning to make your profile serve as a better resume/portfolio page.

## Delete genuinely unused forks

There's often a tendency to keep forks of other people's repos for way too long after your pull requests are merged.

If you aren't working on a repo fork, it may really be better to delete it. You can always fork it again.

If you are concerned about repo's fate, like it happened with youtube-dl lately, it's better to maintain mirrors on independent code hosting services that are concerned with digital freedom and privacy, like [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org) or [SourceHut](https://sr.ht).

## Walk through your pull requests

We all want things to move fast, but it's still a fact of life: sometimes pull requests linger for months or even years.

And sometimes it's _we_ who forgot to merge PRs, or make changes when repo owners request them.

If you are tidying up your account, it's a good idea to walk through both incoming and outgoing PRs. Merge or reject incoming PRs. If your own PRs don't get any attention, ping the repo owner. If they want you to change something, make the change.