Best way to put companies / projects into git repos

[benBeideman]

Hi all,

I'm standing up a paperclip instance that has a company for each of my consulting clients, as well as a company for my consulting business itself.

What is the recommended way to get Paperclip companies and/or projects into git? Is only GH supported, or can my self-hosted ForgeJo work?

Should I git init in the project folders created, as well as create one for each of the companies?

I see that projects allow specifying a repo, not sure that companies do. I'm going to experiment around on a throw-away instance and see what I can figure out, but if anyone has advice or can point me to a doc that describes the best approach, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[starkmarkus]

My intuition would be to treat companies and projects differently here.

I would not necessarily create a Git repo for each Paperclip company unless the company itself has files/configuration that you want to version. A company sounds more like an organizational boundary for clients, permissions, context, billing, etc.

For Git, I would usually put the repository boundary at the project level, because that is where code, docs, generated artifacts, and project-specific history belong.

So the structure I would start with is:

• one Paperclip company per consulting client
• one or more projects inside that company
• one Git repo per project, if the project has code/docs/assets worth versioning
• a separate repo for your own consulting business/company only if you have reusable internal templates, docs, automations, or shared project assets

I would avoid nesting lots of independent Git repos under one company folder unless Paperclip explicitly expects that layout. It can get messy quickly, especially if projects have different permissions, remotes, or lifecycle.

On the Git provider question, I would first check whether the “repo” field expects a GitHub-specific integration or just a generic Git remote URL. If it is only storing/using a normal Git URL, Forgejo should probably work. If Paperclip uses GitHub APIs for auth, PRs, issues, webhooks, or repo metadata, then Forgejo may not work unless there is explicit support for generic Git/Forgejo/Gitea.

So my practical approach would be:

1. create a throwaway company + project
2. initialize Git at the project folder level
3. try setting the project repo to a Forgejo remote URL
4. check whether Paperclip only needs Git operations or GitHub-specific API access
5. only add company-level repos if there is a clear reason

If there is no doc yet, it would be useful for maintainers to clarify the intended model: are companies meant to map to Git repos, or are only projects supposed to have repo bindings?