How I prepare a new GitHub repository for personal use

📅 March 30th, 2025 • 🖊 Felipe Bojorquez • 🏷 software, code, git, engineering

This is a personal list of things that I usually do when I create a new repository. This is not meant to be a general recommendation but rather I write this to serve as a checklist for myself when creating a new codebase for a learning or personal project.

In general, I like to keep things simple and minimal. That’s why I only enable things that I will use. For small hobby projects I prefer to enable features when they are needed.

Without further ado, these are the things that I set, as of March 2025, when I create a new small repository for personal use.

Keeping it simple for smaller projects

For small projects I disable the features that I won’t use: wikis, issues, sponsorships, etc. These toggles can be found in the repository page, then Settings -> General -> Features.

Pull request merge behavior

This is just personal preference.

Under Settings -> General -> Pull Requests.

• Only allow squash merging, with the default commit message set to the PR title and description. Disable “merge commits” and “rebase merging”.
• Always suggest updating pull request branches set to enabled.
• Automatically delete head branches set to enabled.

Default branch: main

As a start, I create a regular branch protection rule with the branch name pattern main. This creates a rule that only applies to my default branch. Under Settings -> Branches.

For the main branch, I generally enable the following protections:

• Require signed commits.
• Require linear history.
• Do not allow bypassing the above settings.

In addition to the above, for projects where I will be using pull requests instead of committing directly to main I usually enable the following protections:

• Require a pull request before merging.
  • Dismiss stale pull request approvals when new commits are pushed.
• Require status checks to pass before merging.
  • Require branches to be up to date before merging.

Actions

Under Settings -> Actions -> General.

Artifact and log retention: 1 day. For personal hobby projects I don’t really need more and it’s an easy way to reduce your storage usage on GitHub. For reference, the default is 90 days for personal accounts.

Final thoughts

For creating something quick for learning and experimenting with code, these are the settings that I like the most. But especially for hobby projects, use what makes you happy.