May 2012 Summaries

GitHub for Windows is a native application designed to simplify the process of using Git and GitHub on Windows computers, including XP, Vista, 7, and Windows 8, by offering a user-friendly alternative to command line utilities and SSH key configurations. Released as a free download, the application includes a complete installation of msysGit, making it a comprehensive solution for managing GitHub repositories. It allows users to clone repositories, browse and create commits, and manage branches easily, while providing a seamless installation experience with automatic background updates. GitHub for Windows is compatible with GitHub Enterprise installations and is built using open-source projects like libgit2 and msysGit, with additional tools such as posh-git, Caliburn.Micro, ReactiveUI, and the Chromium Embedded Framework enhancing its functionality. Written in C#, the application leverages the GitHub API v3 and integrates Json.NET and RestSharp to facilitate interaction with GitHub's services, ultimately aiming to make the collaboration on GitHub more accessible and efficient for Windows users.

Brandon Keepers and Jonathan Hoyt from GitHub are attending jsDay 2012 in Verona, Italy, and are inviting others in the area to join them for drinks. They plan to meet at the Kulmbacher Bier-Haus on Thursday, May 17th, 2012, at 8:30 pm, offering attendees the chance to enjoy a beer or three on GitHub.

GitHub's dedicated training team is leveraging new opportunities to host workshops and events in diverse locations, including a Git and GitHub training session at SynergyJ on Tuesday, May 15th. On the same day, a free community Git educational event will be held at 17:30, followed by a social gathering called a GitHub drinkup at Corazón de Maguey, where participants can discuss Git topics in a relaxed atmosphere. This evening event, hosted by Matthew McCullough, will take place from 20:00 to 22:00, and participants are encouraged to RSVP via StageHQ.

With the launch of the new git-scm.com site, a series of free Git screencasts is being progressively introduced, beginning with a video titled "What is Version Control?" aimed at users new to Git. This initial six-minute episode provides a concise explanation of the benefits of a version control system (VCS), such as Git, emphasizing its role in facilitating collaborative work on documents, images, and source code. It specifically targets colleagues who require a quick understanding of the value that a VCS offers in collaborative environments. The screencast series is authored by Matthew J. McCullough.

GitHub for Mac utilizes TwUI, an open-source UI framework developed by Twitter, which is based on Core Animation for Mac and is also used in Twitter for Mac to create fast and animatable UIs with modern APIs. GitHub has contributed numerous improvements and bug fixes to their version of TwUI, including HiDPI support and new features like an updated popover, and these enhancements are now integrated into the original TwUI repository. Collaboration with Twitter aims to further enhance TwUI, ensuring its promising future as both parties work together to make the framework even more robust and efficient.

Octicons, a new icon font, was developed through a collaborative effort by five designers who utilized Adobe Photoshop instead of the more traditional Illustrator to create vector icons. The team optimized the icons for specific sizes, particularly 16px and 32px, with the smaller size focusing on pixel precision and the larger size designed for scalability. They used Glyphs to construct the font, setting up a 2048x2048 unit grid to ensure minimal distortion during export, which allowed them to maintain the integrity of the icons' shapes while achieving a smaller file size. The design process included a meticulous setup in Photoshop, scaling in Illustrator, and precise positioning in Glyphs, culminating in an OTF file that was fine-tuned for optimal display through WebKit's font-smoothing property. The project, driven by a detailed focus on design and technical execution, represents a significant achievement by the team, reflecting their commitment to creating high-quality icons.

GitHub has expanded its @mention feature to allow users to mention entire teams from an organization in issues, pull requests, and commits, using the format @organization/team-name with the aid of an autocompleter. Once a team is mentioned, all its members are automatically subscribed to the issue, enabling them to manage notifications similarly to individual @mentions. Users can adjust their notification preferences through the Notification Center in Account Settings, as detailed by Rob Sanheim.

GitHub has introduced Octicons, a new custom icon font, to update its visual language and improve the clarity and speed of its website. This change aims to replace outdated icons with more fitting representations, especially with the advent of new retina screen products, ensuring that their site remains visually appealing at any zoom level. The development of Octicons was a collaborative effort involving several team members who contributed ideas, sketches, and designs, with a focus on creating accessible imagery for concepts unique to their platform, such as repositories, which they liken to a journal that tells the story of a project's evolution. The new icon set leverages CSS3 techniques to enhance page load times and the overall user experience by focusing on rendering in the browser rather than relying on images.

GitHub is hosting a social event at Fullsteam Brewery in Durham on Tuesday, May 15th, at 8:00 PM, offering drinks for attendees as a gesture of goodwill. The event promises enjoyable times with local beer, and for those who get hungry, Will & Pop’s food truck will be available outside to sell food. The gathering is organized by Adam Roben, inviting people to join for an evening of community and festivities.

As summer approaches with its promise of beaches, sunshine, and tropical drinks, the Lone Palm bar invites patrons to embrace the season's vibe at their upcoming event. Scheduled for Thursday, May 10th, at 8:00 PM, the gathering will take place at Lone Palm, located at 3394 22nd Street. This event, highlighted by its beach-themed ambiance complete with palm trees and refreshing beverages, is organized by Kami Richey, also known by the handle @kamzilla, and is tagged under events.

GitHub is organizing a social gathering at Publik Draft House in Atlanta, scheduled from 8:30 to 10:30, inviting attendees to join after the ATLRUG meeting for a casual meet-and-greet.

GitHub has launched a revamped homepage for the Git project, git-scm.com, to replace the outdated site previously hosted at kernel.org, which went offline. Spearheaded by Scott Chacon and the GitHub team, the new site features a modern design by Jason Long, an AsciiDoc parser by Nick Hengeveld, and a Git video series by Matthew McCullough. It hosts versioned reference pages for Git commands, incorporates content from Chacon's "Pro Git" book, and provides an easier download process by auto-detecting users' operating systems. The site also deprecates the Git Community Book in favor of the Pro Git book, and integrates a searchable database of Git documentation, including related content links. The aim is to simplify access to Git resources and enhance user experience.

ReactiveCocoa (RAC) is a framework developed to enhance native app development by providing a more cohesive and efficient way of handling asynchronous operations, typically involving waiting and reacting to user interactions, network calls, or changes in data. By offering a unified, high-level interface for composing and transforming sequences of values, RAC minimizes complexity through its declarative approach to defining behaviors and relationships between properties. It simplifies processes that would otherwise require extensive boilerplate code, such as observing changes via KVO, filtering values, and managing state. RAC can combine sequences and support asynchronous operations, enabling developers to chain tasks, manage concurrency, and handle race conditions more effectively. The framework, inspired by .NET's Reactive Extensions, is available for both Mac and iOS, and it allows developers to focus on expressing their intent clearly while reducing the need for mutable state and enhancing code locality.

GitHub now allows users to easily link to specific sections of a README or blob content page by hovering over any section heading to reveal a pilcrow symbol. Clicking this symbol will update the URL in the address bar, enabling users to share direct links to particular sections. Alternatively, users can right-click the pilcrow and select "Copy Link Address" to achieve the same result. This feature, introduced by Ryan Tomayko, enhances navigation and sharing capabilities within GitHub documentation.

GitHub recently launched a new About section featuring high-resolution logos, team photos, and job listings, but the focus of the blog post is on how a massive Pull Request facilitated this update. The Pull Request involved 130 commits and 91 comments from 10 contributors over two months, illustrating GitHub's collaborative approach akin to an open-source project. Pull Requests at GitHub are essential for fostering discussion, allowing team members to contribute where they can add value, and tracking progress. The post emphasizes opening Pull Requests early to encourage ongoing feedback and acknowledges that not all Pull Requests need to be merged, as they can serve to refine ideas and strategies.

GitHub is encouraging data enthusiasts to explore and analyze its public timeline, which features hundreds of thousands of daily events, and is hosting a competition to showcase creative visualizations of this data. Participants are invited to submit a link to their visual works alongside a description to [email protected] by May 21st, with the chance to win prizes including $200, $100, and $50 to the GitHub Shop for the top three entries. Winning visualizations will also be featured on the GitHub blog, and all entries will be included in a data showcase. The initiative is spearheaded by Brian Doll as part of GitHub's effort to engage the community in innovative data storytelling.

GitHub Archive, a project initiated by Ilya Grigorik, records and archives GitHub's public timeline, making it accessible for analysis, and it is now available as a public dataset on Google BigQuery, where users can run queries for free. This development allows users to analyze GitHub's extensive data without the need to store it themselves. Additionally, a bonus dataset on BigQuery explores programming language correlations, providing insights such as the likelihood of a programmer who uses Objective-C also using Java, and observations about users of text editors like Emacs and Vim. These datasets enable a deeper understanding of programming trends and behaviors on GitHub.

GitHub enthusiasts in the Ann Arbor area are invited to a networking event featuring Zach Holman, Brandon Keepers, and Matt Graham at Ashley’s, located at 338 South State St., on Thursday, May 3rd, from 8:00 to 10:00 pm. This gathering offers an opportunity for local developers to connect, socialize, and celebrate great code with complimentary drinks provided by the hosts.

GitHub Enterprise has introduced a series of new features to enhance its platform, incorporating updates from GitHub.com and adding Enterprise-specific functionalities. These include Pages 2.0, new graphs, and easier repository creation. Enterprise-specific enhancements consist of SNMP support for expanded monitoring options, the ability to suspend user accounts to free up seats when employees leave, and limited SSH access with CLI utilities. Additionally, a feature to deny force pushes helps prevent unauthorized changes to a repository's history, and a new VMware Tools installer addresses compatibility issues with VMware-specific features. These updates aim to improve user experience and operational efficiency for GitHub Enterprise users.