November 2010 Summaries

GitHub Jobs has partnered with The Changelog to feature job listings on The Changelog’s podcast, allowing employers to reach a broader audience. By selecting the option to advertise on the podcast for an additional $100 when creating a job listing, employers can showcase their opportunities to The Changelog's audience. GitHub expresses enthusiasm for this collaboration, highlighting their admiration for The Changelog's quality content and their excitement about promoting GitHub Jobs through this partnership.

On Cyber Monday, The GitHub Shop offers a 25% discount on all orders using the coupon code CYBERCAT, with the sale ending Tuesday at midnight PST. The promotion also includes the restocking of GitHub Mugs and the introduction of a new Blacktocat t-shirt, described as a soft, black-on-black American Apparel Tri-blend that is ideal for gifting. This special offer is available for international shipping, encouraging customers to explore the merchandise available in the shop.

Git has long faced challenges with its non-re-entrant library, which complicates the development of GUIs or web interfaces by requiring slow and cumbersome workarounds. Shawn Pearce initiated the libgit2 project to address this, creating a linkable library, but it languished until Vicent Marti, under the Google Summer of Code program and mentored by Scott Chacon, significantly advanced its development. Now, GitHub has enlisted Marti to continue enhancing libgit2 and its Ruby bindings, Rugged. Though still evolving, these projects offer substantial capabilities, with additional Python bindings available. Marti, a 20-year-old developer from the Catalan Countries, balances his computer science studies in Helsinki with interests in indie video games and Git advocacy.

On December 14th, a series of full-day online Git training sessions will commence, led by Matthew McCullough from Ambient Ideas, who has gained recognition for his global Git training expertise. These sessions offer a one-day intensive introduction to Git, and interested individuals or teams can register through the provided training page. The training maintains a casual atmosphere, similar to their in-person sessions, as wearing pants is optional.

libFreenect is an open-source library designed for experimenting with the Kinect, enabling users to create a variety of innovative projects such as lightsabers, interactive puppets, and multitouch interfaces. Despite being relatively new, it has quickly gained traction, evidenced by its active GitHub project, which boasts 264 watchers and 49 forks. This rapid adoption highlights the library's potential in fostering creative prototypes and applications within a short span of time.

Risk Olson, also known as @technoweenie, announced the successful merging of eight pull requests for various community-supported Service Hooks, each contributed by different developers. These updates include enhancements for Yammer by rboyd, Notifo by stammy, grmble by andyburke, Co-Op by Throlkim, full IRC authentication support by sampierson, ContinuityApp by mborromeo, Flowdock by raneksi, and AMQP by LegNeato. Additionally, RubyDoc.info received a fix from koraktor. Olson expressed gratitude for the contributions and the community's patience during this process.

"Getting Good With Git" is an ebook designed for beginners with minimal command line and Git experience, aiming to teach essential skills from command line basics to utilizing GitHub for collaboration. Authored by Chris Wanstrath, known by the handle @defunkt, the ebook offers valuable content paired with an appealing layout, making it a recommended resource for those looking to learn and improve their Git proficiency.

JSLint, a code quality tool for the JavaScript language, recently transitioned to GitHub, generating buzz on Twitter. The main repository for JSLint is managed under Douglas Crockford's account, who is a notable figure in the tech community. The move to GitHub is seen positively, as it allows the project to benefit from GitHub's community and collaborative tools. This transition also highlights the rapid rise in popularity of JavaScript on GitHub, where it now ties with Ruby as the most popular language, a status determined by the size of files rather than the language of repositories.

A configuration error during an upgrade of GitHub's continuous integration setup inadvertently caused the production database to be erased and re-created, resulting in temporary data loss and inaccessible user dashboards and profiles. Although most of GitHub's data was restored from a backup, the large size of the "events" table delayed the process, and some recent data, such as pull request changes, might be irretrievable. The company plans to prevent future incidents by isolating test and production environments, reducing the size of the "events" table, and storing binlogs for better recovery options. GitHub acknowledges the inconvenience caused and offers support for users experiencing ongoing issues.

GitHub has addressed the issue of session hijacking and mixed-content warnings on its website by implementing a solution that ensures secure embedding of images via GitHub flavored markdown. Previously, some pages allowed embedding images that resulted in mixed-content warnings, distracting users and compromising their sense of security. The solution involves rewriting the src attribute of img tags to proxy through GitHub's secure asset servers, thus eliminating the warnings. This technical change was executed by developing a simple HTTP proxy in Node.js, integrated with GitHub’s existing nginx setup. Users are encouraged to report any remaining issues through support tickets, as the new system appears to be functioning well. The company is now focusing on further feature development after resolving this security concern.

A collaboration between local San Francisco artist Sirron Norris and GelaSkins resulted in the creation of custom device skins featuring Norris's unique take on the Octocat, set in an imaginative San Francisco landscape with elements like the Golden Gate Bridge and Transamerica Pyramid. Inspired by the artwork's vibrant depiction, the skins are available for various gadgets, including 15" and 13" MacBook Pro Unibody laptops, iPhones, Nexus One, and iPads. This partnership allows fans to personalize their electronic devices with visually striking designs, enhancing their aesthetic appeal and offering a creative expression of local artistic flair.

A recent update has introduced a new downloads page, featuring a completely rewritten file uploader that enhances user experience with improved functionality, including the ability to upload multiple files simultaneously and better error handling. This update is aimed at providing a more efficient interface for users with push access to repositories, exemplified by its implementation on pages like brotherbard's gitx fork. The downloads section is designed to host various project-related items beyond just code, such as PDF documents, binary software distributions, minified JavaScript files, PSD mockups, and SQL or data dumps. Additionally, users can automatically generate zip and tar.gz packages of their codebase using git tags, which will appear on the downloads page, offering a streamlined method for sharing project components.

Risk Olson announced the implementation of SSL for all website interactions, ensuring that every page hit, regardless of user login status, is securely transmitted over HTTPS with secure cookies. This follows an earlier update securing private repositories and user dashboards against sidejacking. Despite the progress, some resources served from external sites still trigger SSL warnings, which the team plans to address promptly. The initiative marks a significant stride in their ongoing efforts to enhance security, with further fixes for insecure assets in comments and other areas expected in the coming days.