May 2010 Summaries

Calendar About Nothing, a GitHub side project by Risk Olson, has been updated to include GitHub OAuth2 support, enhancing its integration capabilities for developers. Olson plans to share implementation details in the API forum, inviting developers to begin building on the project while it is still in its beta phase. Until comprehensive documentation is available on the Developer site, users should consider the current update as a preliminary version.

A scheduled maintenance for a Redis upgrade was successfully completed, as announced by Ryan Tomayko. The site was temporarily unavailable for a few minutes on Friday, May 28, 2010, starting at 22:00 PST, during which time access via git/ssh was also affected. The plan included a rollback if the downtime exceeded 15 minutes, but the maintenance was executed efficiently without significant disruption.

After acquiring their first office space in San Francisco, the team promptly purchased a stoplight to creatively display the status of their build system. By connecting an Arduino to CI Joe, they transformed the stoplight into a visual indicator of build status, with the help of a friend named Greg who performed the Arduino setup and shared the process in a post, including open-sourcing the Arduino firmware.

The text introduces several innovative and notable tech projects, emphasizing their functionality and impact. Memcached is highlighted as a reliable in-memory key/value store, crucial for sites like GitHub, offering simple yet effective caching capabilities with community-driven features like consistent hashing and replication. Among new projects, jsnes is a JavaScript NES emulator that runs in browsers, particularly optimized for Chrome, allowing users to play classic games. Gleebox, a browser extension, enhances browsing with a command bar enabling HTML element search and jQuery selectors. CityLights is a Java-based visualization project that syncs visuals to Thom Yorke's song, showcasing Processing's capabilities in sound synchronization. Trinidad, a RubyGem, facilitates running Rack-based applications on Apache Tomcat, offering an alternative to the abandoned Glassfish gem. The author, Nick Quaranto, encourages suggestions for future articles focusing on open source desktop applications.

Risk Olson introduces a new feature that uses annotated tags to describe project downloads, enhancing clarity by providing detailed descriptions, as exemplified by Ruby on Rails' v2.3.5 release notes, which include improvements and bug fixes. This approach offers more informative insights compared to the traditional use of commit messages, which often lack context. Additionally, Olson notes a change in the output filename structure for tag or branch downloads to include the tag in the name, modifying the format to {user}-{repo}-{tag}-{n}-g{sha}.tar.gz, a convention derived from the 'git describe' command, thereby improving the traceability and organization of files.

A meetup is scheduled for Thursday, May 13th, at Thirsty Bear, located at 661 Howard Street, San Francisco, starting at 8:00 pm, to discuss recent updates and upcoming changes to GitHub. Attendees are encouraged to arrive before 10:00 pm as Thirsty Bear closes at that time, although the event will continue afterward at a different location hinted to be Rickenbacker's.

A new dedicated API forum has been launched to facilitate announcements, address questions, and handle feature requests, with a summary of recent updates and a proposed modification to the contributors API call already available. The initiative, introduced by Risk Olson, aims to enhance communication and collaboration within the API community, providing a centralized platform for users to engage and share feedback.

GitHub Rebase highlights a variety of .NET projects and tools, featuring MassTransit, an open-source Enterprise Service Bus written in C# for implementing messaging protocols like Publish/Subscribe. The blog also introduces RestSharp, a feature-rich HTTP client with automatic serialization and authentication support, and GitExtensions, a Visual Studio plugin enhancing Git use within the IDE. Additionally, the post discusses FluentCassandra, a new C# Cassandra client library, and GitSharp, a Windows-compatible implementation of Git for code interaction. FluentMigrator is also showcased for its ability to manage database migrations in .NET projects, offering benefits like version-controlled database history and simplified project setup for new developers. Each project is accompanied by documentation and resources for further exploration and implementation.

GitHub has introduced a new repository admin screen designed to enhance user experience by providing a more intuitive interface and streamlined access to administrative tools. This update aims to simplify repository management by consolidating key features and settings into a single, easily navigable location. Developed by Kyle Neath, the revamped admin screen reflects GitHub's commitment to improving functionality and efficiency for its users, addressing feedback from the community to create a more cohesive and user-friendly platform. The new interface is expected to make administrative tasks quicker and more efficient, benefiting both individual developers and larger teams managing complex projects.

GitHub has announced write support for Subversion, enabling developers and designers to collaborate on Git projects using existing SVN tools like Versions or Tortoise SVN. Users can access Subversion functionality by using their GitHub credentials on a Subversion URL, although it is recommended to check out projects from github.com rather than svn.github.com. While this update facilitates collaboration, users might encounter issues such as unusual merge histories and limited functionality with annotations and certain types of diffs. The feature currently only allows checkout of entire repositories and the default branch, requiring a 'master' branch to be present. This new capability is still in beta, implying a certain level of risk when using Subversion to modify code, and users are encouraged to test its suitability for their needs.