Coherent GitHub topics

[wibeasley]

To any developers of REDCap API packages/code (including @tjrivera, @aarenson, @mullen2, @nutterb, @rparrish, @sburns, @pbchase, @eugyev, @peterclark, @haozhu233, @james2012, @agapow):

GitHub's new Topics should help make our libraries more findable. This makes me happy a maintainer of the REDCap Tools Projects page, because it should make it easier for someone to find a library/package that best suits their needs and environment.

I've recently asked the REDCap Development Committee to agree on a coherent scheme (eg, redcap, redcap-api, and redcap-plugin) so our repos' tags aren't so scattered. Of course these are just suggestions to help identify & distinguish the roles of our packages; I'm not pretending to have authority over anyone.

For now, I think you can apply redcap without worrying about conflicting with the upcoming scheme. I'll give the committee a week or two and report the results.

Edit: here's the link on the forums, if you have access: https://community.projectredcap.org/content/idea/15797/tagging-github-repos-with-topics.html

[sburns]

👍 to 'redcap'

[agapow]

Ditto

[wibeasley]

• redcap is applied to almost anything related to REDCap. It's typically supplemented by some of the following tags:
• redcap-external-module is applied to external modules, especially if the it's still being developed and not yet in REDCap's repo of stable external module (as pointed out by @andy.martin, @kyle.mcguffin, @mark.mcever in their 2022 REDCapCon talk.
• redcap-api is applied to anything that facilitates communication between (a) REDCap API and (b) a client language like R, Python, PHP (eg: REDCapR, @andrew.arenson's PhpCap, @chris.nefcy's nef-c-sharp).
• redcap-plugin is applied to deployable plugins (eg: @andy.martin's autonotify, docker-compose).
• redcap-infrastructure is applied to code that helps maintain layers on top of REDCap that don't do anything directly to a project (eg: @andy.martin's hook framework).
• redcap-package is applied to code that is self-contained, and the client can update with a function like pip, update_rubygems, or update.packages() (eg, PyCap, REDCapR).
• ?redcap-snippet? is applied to code that the client has to manually update (usually by copying and pasting file(s)) after the developer updates it (eg, nef-c-sharp). I'm not sold on this label; any suggestions?
• ?redcap-gui? is applied to something that helps the front-end? I don't do much on the user side, so I leave it up to other to decide which distinguishing features matter (eg, @andy.martin's autofill-bookmarklet).