Version Control
Overview
We're managing BlastPad using git and GitHub.
Our git repository serves as a monorepo combining five distinct parts of our project
- Docusaurus Documentation
- Flask Web Server
- Core user interface (BlastUI)
- Block code editor
- Raspberry Pi Image Generation Scripts
Branching
Branches are created based on the latest main branch commit.
Branches are named after and linked to Jira issues. These issue-based branches are always prefixed BP-XX where XX is the issue number the branch is linked to.
Branch Protection
We have 3 branch protection rules enabled on our GitHub that apply to the main branch:
- Require a pull request before merging
- Require 2 pull request approvals before merging
- Do not allow bypassing the above settings
GitHub Actions
Build Image
We use a GitHub Action workflow across all branches to build BlastPad operating system images for our Raspberry Pi. When a new commit is pushed to our GitHub repository, the workflow starts the build process based on the pi-gen-action and pi-gen projects, which make it easy to Raspberry Pi images with custom steps along the way. We have custom build stages found in our install folder that install important packages, set file permissions, install configuration files, and so much more. If all of these steps succeed, then the workflow returns a .img file comprising our entire operating system that can be flashed onto an SD card and run on the BlastPad.
Docusaurus Build
We use a GitHub Action on our main branch to build our Docusaurus project documentation. Docusaurus uses the text and configuration details from Markdown and JSON files to build an HTML-based documentation website.