Merge the two git set-up modules

[drelliche]

The existence of two separate modules for setting up Git (unix/Mac vs Windows) makes the creation of pathways more difficult since no one needs both of those modules.

I propose using some of the conditional logic that the LS team used for their template modules to combine these into a single module that bifurcates within the module instead of being two separate modules.

I'm open to pushback, but want a record of this opinion that I am slowly holding more and more strongly here in the form of an issue.

[rosemm]

I’m here for it 👍

[rosemm]

One caveat: we don’t have a way to conditionally add headers that would appear in TOC. So what LS did is have a select your data type at the top of each page, and then the correct text populates — that means 1) you have to re-select your choice on each page and 2) you’re required to have the same headers for each “version”. An alternative would be to have a “stub” module that’s just a landing page for folks to select windows or Mac. I think it would be overkill for this to be a Lia module. Ideally, it would be a one-question “survey” (what’s your operating system?) that would automatically then send them to the right module.

[rosemm]

Or actually a survey is overkill too. It could just be a simple html page with two links, one for windows and one for Mac

[rosemm]

@drelliche does this seem like a viable solution? https://arcus.github.io/education_modules/git_setup_modules

[drelliche]

@rosemm After some thought, I think a LiaScript wrapper for the landing page would let us do a few things that we can't otherwise do, particularly with metadata and app/pathway creation including:

• have a single description with all of the appropriate metadata for the git setup to be one module
• let people add it to their pathway directly
• let other modules link to and depend on just this combined one.

[rosemm]

Weird delayed follow up thought on this: Would it be worthwhile adding os as metadata? It's not going to be relevant for 90% of our modules (and shouldn't be required), but then that would give us the option to have operating system be something they can filter for in the module discovery app (or even something that's detected in the browser for them when they use it? Is that magic?) I'm thinking about this because when we do have parallel modules like this, there's no guarantee that the metadata can or should be shared -- prereqs, time estimate, etc. could be super different. And in fact the estimated time for the windows module is indeed longer for the git setup module. So a shared lia stub for both modules might end up being a pretty crappy skateboard. Although, of course, long live the crappy skateboard!

[drelliche]

@rosemm I love and hate that idea. Love it because it obviously makes so much sense for these modules, but hate the idea that we need it (and hope that it is only relevant to these two).

Let's talk about it!