The University provides a GitHub Enteprise server at https://github.warwick.ac.uk which is accessible by all staff and students at the University. Staff and students may use this to store code in line with their work or study. The server is provided on an "as-is" basis, and support is not provided beyond the official GitHub documentation and this page.

Terms and conditions

The University is not responsible for any of the content contained in a repository, nor does the University assert any ownership over repository content. There may be some exceptions to this rule, where a repository belongs to an organisation run by University staff for an official purpose, but such exceptions will be individually identified and do not affect the general principle that responsibility and ownership of a repository rest with its author(s).

The university's acceptable use policy still applies. In particular, this implies that:-

• Users are responsible for managing the permissions on their own repositories. In particular, students should take care to maintain robust control over coursework and other academic materials that they may use repositories for and ensure they are private. Setting inappropriate permissions on academic work may be considered an attempt to collude or cheat. If you do not comply with this term, your department may decide to instigate any of the available actions as stipulated within the provisions of Regulation 11.
• Users shall not attempt to gain access to, copy, or otherwise make use of any other user’s programs or data except by explicitly supported means. This includes acquiring knowledge of any other user’s password. Attempting to interfere with or read private data in another user's repository is a breach of this term.
• Users shall not attempt to gain access to systems management facilities or other facilities not available for general use. This applies to the GitHub software just as it does to every other computing system at Warwick, and in particular it means that inserting code or markup into your posts or comments which breaks the layout of GitHub Enterprise outside of your own repositories is a breach of the AUP.
• Computing facilities shall not be used to display, print, transmit or store text or images or other data which could be considered offensive such as pornographic, racially abusive or libellous material. The test here is not whether you, or your peers, find content offensive; it is whether such content could be deemed offensive to others. Do not assume that if you find something harmless or amusing, that therefore it must be acceptable to publish.
• Users should be aware of the possibilities for copyright infringement which arise out of the use of a repository; making copyrighted video or audio material available, or reproducing images or text from other sources may be a breach of copyright law and thus illegal. Asking for assistance with (or identifying mechanisms for) copyright violation is also unacceptable.
• No one shall make use of the University’s computing facilities to harass any person or group of persons.
• No one shall make any use of the University’s computing facilities to undertake or assist in a criminal act.
• No one shall produce, use or promulgate material which could bring the University, or any part of the University, into disrepute.

Limitations and known issues

• We do not provide self-hosted runners for e.g. GitHub Actions workflows at this time.
• We do not provide a publicly accessible GitHub Pages domain, Sitebuilder is the university's approved CMS for public-facing pages. We do support internally accessible GitHub Pages sites (requires SSO authentication), but:
  • We are currently aware of issues with GitHub Pages builds, these are under investigation by the GitHub support team.

Monitoring of repositories

Outside of repositories run by University staff for official purposes, repositories are not routinely monitored by the University. This has two implications:-

• If you see something on a repository which you think may breach one of the terms above, or otherwise concerns you, then you should not assume that the University is aware of the problem, and you should contact the IT Help Desk to report your concern.
• If you are the author of a repository, you should never assume that posting something in a repository is an acceptable way of communicating with the University. Adding content to a repository relating to matters such as financial or study concerns is absolutely not an effective substitute for contacting your personal tutor or an office of the University to discuss your concerns.

Information about code published by the Software Engineering team