Git Winch is a loosely-coupled minimalist user and data management system, mainly focused on small and medium size offices. That means it does not enforce rigid ways of working. Each office has enough wiggle room to develop their own working system based on top of Git Winch.
Git Winch is totally file-agnostic. What this means is that the office is free to use any file they choose. We do NOT lock you into any files. We do not put you into our “private walled-garden” … Read about the “walled-garden” problem here and here.
We do NOT make offices transmit files through our server. This is a huge deal, if you think deeply. In today's AI driven world; many large companies are using your data to train their AI – and some often surreptitiously do other nefarious activities such as user-profiling, etc. We do not do anything of that sorts so you are very sure your files can never be read by us. Your privacy is totally protected.
There are many office systems that allows you to attach files and then send those files to others. For e.g. Slack or Microsoft Teams. This is actually a serious headache, which needs a deeper explanation. Read about the "V-Four" problem here.
Git Winch will keep other members working on the files in a repository informed about which files they are working. It prevents the same file being worked-upon, thus it is useful for working on binary files as there would be very little chance of merge errors.
Members can leave additional notes on each and every file, if they so want – such meta-information about files can be very useful to help others working on those files.
The coordination server of Git Winch only stores the file-paths and that too only for those files your office is working on. Not the data itself. This is for coordinating the work and reducing chances of clashes.
The owner/manager creates his/her own repository at one of the compatible Git Hosts: Github or Gitlab or Gitea … As both Gitlab and Gitea allows self-hosting too, this gives you the maximum flexibility on where the central repositories of the office are to be located. Gitlab and Github allow free Git hosting.* You can also choose to host Gitlab or Gitea on your own servers too, if you so want, for maximum privacy and independence.
Your files are not only backed up at the Git Host of your choice, but you and your office can revert back to previous version of the same files. This is especially a major advantage for creative offices such as graphic artists, marketing agencies, architects…
The office workers need not have any account at the Git Host. Only the owner takes such an account. In fact even the owner just sets up a special Personal Access Token, on the host and nothing much else there. The advantage of using Github/Gitea/Gitlab is available to you without the complexity. Regular office workers need not have any knowledge about the host. This also becomes very useful if you plan to delegate work to temporary workers too.
The system allows owners/managers to distribute work to the office-workers on a need-to-know basis. So office workers need not become member of each and every repository of the office. All that membership is in the hands of the owners/managers.
The owner/manager creates deploy-keys and then passes on the private key to the appropriate member who is allowed to work on the files of a repository. But if a person wants to generate his/her own keys; that also can be done. In that case, after creating the keys, the said member has to pass on the public key to the owner/manager who will then use that key to enroll the person as a member of the said repository.
The managers of such members are also happy as they can see the list of filenames that are being currently worked upon… and by whom.
Owners/managers also can do what we call a hashtag analysis… That's explained here. This can be used to quantize the kind and amount of work that is being done in the office.
Owner/manager can download session logs and can see the IP address and geo-location of each members, their login and logout, and file-handling actions. This is very useful for taking attendance in the office, and getting to know the amount and kind of work each member is doing.
Owner/Manager can even set into motion automatic “build” activities once a repository is pushed. Kind of a simple, yet elegant continuous integration.
The Git Winch Client Application is partially open-source. A bulk of the actual work is done using windows batch files called silently by the application. You are reassured that nothing from the computer where Git Winch is working, is surreptitiously routed to us! If you want more checks; email us at admin@gitwinch.com and we'll show you how to use Fiddler to examine the http connections that the application makes.
If by some chance you need to do some advanced Git commands, you can easily drop into a console window, and carry out the actions using command-line Git. You can also use the popular TortoiseGit if you so choose, provided the repository was cloned using the Git Winch Client Application.
* NOTE: Gitlab and Github are external services. We are not associated with them. Use their free services with your eyes open i.e. read all their terms of service and privacy policy.