Git repositories
Connect a Git repository
Keep a Fontra Hive project in step with a repository on GitHub, public or private. Your team works in Hive; the repository gets one clean commit whenever you send your changes, and what is pushed to GitHub comes back into Hive on its own.
Connect GitHub
Once per project, by one of its admins. It takes a minute.
- Open the project's page in Hive. In the Git repository panel, click Connect GitHub. To start a new project from a repository, choose Connect to an existing Git repository when you create it.
- Choose the repositories, on GitHub. GitHub opens in a new tab: install the Fontra Hive app on your account or organization, and pick Only select repositories. Hive asks for their contents and pull requests (read and write), nothing else of yours. In an organization you don't own, an owner approves the request first.
- Back in Hive, the page updates by itself. Pick the repository and the branch (its default branch to start with).
- Pick the font. Hive lists the fonts it finds in that branch:
.fontrapackages, designspaces and UFOs. Click Connect this repository: Hive fetches the font, which takes a few seconds on a large repository. A new project takes the repository's font as its own.
Day to day
Changes from GitHub come in
When someone pushes to the repository, Hive brings the changes in within a minute, on a branch named upstream/main (after the repository's branch). Designers can also click Pull.
You review, then merge
Nothing changes your font behind your back: merge upstream/main like any other branch, glyph by glyph, with real conflicts drawn side by side.
Push to GitHub
Managers and admins send the main branch's changes as one commit: the title of the latest snapshot, or a message of your own. Everyone who worked on it is credited as a co-author.
GitHub is never overwritten
If someone pushed in the meantime, Hive asks you to bring their changes in and merge them first. Only the files you changed are touched.
Who does what
Admins connect and disconnect. Managers and admins push. Designers pull. Reviewers and observers see the repository's state.
Stop at any time
Disconnect in the project's page ends the link; nothing is deleted, in Hive or on GitHub. Uninstalling the Fontra Hive app in your GitHub settings ends Hive's access to all your repositories.
Which format?
.fontra
The format Hive itself stores. Everything is synchronised, both ways, with no loss.
UFO and designspace
Glyphs and kerning are sent, written the way your files are already written, so a commit changes only what you changed. Other font-level changes (font info, features, axes, sources) are not sent yet: Hive lists them before you push. Edit those in your usual tools, or keep the repository in .fontra.
Where your fonts go
When you connect a repository, your font data goes to the Git host you chose, at your request and under that host's terms; GitHub may store it outside the European Union. This is the only case where a project leaves the EU, and only that project (see our font charter).
Hive keeps the access GitHub gives it on our servers, encrypted, and never sends it to your browser. The keys it uses to read and write a repository last one hour, and reach only the repositories you chose.
Other Git hosts (GitLab…) and pull requests from branches are on the way. Questions? info@uplustype.com