How to design your repository structures to nail platform engineering

Effectively designing repository structures is essential for enhancing platform engineering practices. Here’s a detailed breakdown of best practices to follow:

1. Organizing Repositories by Domain: It's vital to align the design of your repositories with specific domains or functionalities instead of merely structuring them around technical components. This approach fosters clear ownership of each repository and enhances collaboration among team members, facilitating better communication and integration of related features within the same domain.

2. Adopting Monorepos Where Appropriate: A monorepo can streamline the management of dependencies and simplify the process of working across different repositories. However, it’s critical to assess your team’s workflow and needs carefully before choosing this structure. Monorepos can be beneficial in environments with high interdependency among projects but might introduce complexities in larger teams with diverse functions.

3. Establishing Clear Versioning Strategies: Implement a well-defined versioning strategy for your repositories to maintain backward compatibility and ease the upgrade process for those who rely on your libraries. Semantic versioning is a popular option that helps communicate the nature of changes (major, minor, patch) effectively, ensuring that users can understand the impact of updates and modifications.

4. Limiting Repository Size: Keeping repositories small and narrowly focused can improve usability. When repositories become too large, they can be challenging to navigate and manage, making it hard for developers to find the information or code they need. Smaller, well-defined repositories enhance maintainability and the overall productivity of the team.

5. Providing Comprehensive Documentation: Include extensive documentation for each repository, detailing its purpose, functionality, and usage. Additionally, clear contribution guidelines encourage community participation and help new contributors understand how to engage with the project. Well-documented repositories can significantly lower the learning curve for new team members and external contributors.

6. Leveraging Automation Tools: To ensure consistency and minimize manual errors during the release process, utilize automation tools for testing and deployment. Implementing continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices can streamline processes, enhance code quality, and accelerate delivery timelines, contributing to a more agile development environment.