# Transition to GitHub

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/transition-to-github/10358>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [February 20, 2020, 12:01am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/transition-to-github/10358 "2020-02-20T00:01:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 25

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**Author:** ![ihnorton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/ihnorton/32/9_2.png) [@ihnorton](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/ihnorton)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 2:23am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/transition-to-github/10358/25 "2020-03-16T02:23:54Z")

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I just pulled up Slicer github to look for something, and noticed all the stars were gone… ouch!

Perhaps this has already been hashed out in depth, but FWIW, throwing away a strong github profile is unfortunate and might be detrimental – users/contributors/granting organizations make a lot of decisions about project viability based on star count …for better or worse. As one example, I think github star count helped to qualify Slicer for free discourse hosting, even though we were somewhat below their listed minimum count.

I guess that a motivation for creating the repo from scratch was to maintain issue number continuity from mantis, but I would suggest transferring the issues from mantis in to a “github mantis archive” repo instead, which could then be cross-referenced (and the issue transfer seems to only be titles anyway…).

It may also be helpful to know that you can then you can [_move_ issues](https://help.github.com/en/github/managing-your-work-on-github/transferring-an-issue-to-another-repository) from the “github mantis archive” to the “real” Slicer repository as needed, maintaining a chain of history (github creates back and forward links), and avoiding the situation where someone will need to triage ~500 issues by going back to mantis (better to triage on-demand).

This would also avoid losing the pull-request history on the existing repo, which seems more valuable than title-only mantis issue numbers.

$.02 from the bleachers!

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/transition-to-github/10358)._