title: Sharing a CONTRIBUTING.md file across multiple github repos
body: <p>Problem: We have multiple github repos in the <a href="https://github.com/whatwg" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/whatwg</a> github org and want to have the same content in the <code>CONTRIBUTING.md</code> file in each repo—but we don’t want to manually maintain/revision the files separately. Instead we’d like to automate a way to keep them in sync.</p>
  
  <p>So basically, I guess I’d like to have a “master” <code>CONTRIBUTING.md</code>, with copies in each repo that are (semi)automatically all keep in sync (somehow) with that master <code>CONTRIBUTING.md</code>.</p>
  
  <p>So I can imagine we might be able to keep the master <code>CONTRIBUTING.md</code> in one repo, and maybe have a <a href="https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks" rel="nofollow">client-side hook</a> set up for that repo such that each time somebody pushes a change to that master, the change gets pushed to all the other repos as well? Or maybe instead I could set it up to have the pushes to the other repos run automatically through Travis CI?</p>
  
  <p>Or maybe there’s some completely better way than using a client-side hook or Travis CI to do it?</p>
  
  <p>Anyway, as far as the “why” behind all this, the reason is, we want to consistently use the same contributor guidelines for each repo, and at the same time, we want to get the <a href="https://github.com/blog/1184-contributing-guidelines" rel="nofollow">github-specific benefits that come from having a <code>CONTRIBUTING.md</code> file</a>.</p>