January 2013 Summaries

GitHub has introduced new features to enhance its search functionalities, allowing users to sort search results beyond the default "best match" option. These improvements enable users to sort repositories by stars, forks, or recent updates; users by followers, number of repositories, or join date; and code by the date it was last indexed, making it easier to navigate through the vast array of available projects. The enhancements are designed to make searching through GitHub's extensive database of over five million projects more efficient and user-friendly, reflecting GitHub's commitment to improving the user experience.

A game jam is an intense, often 48-hour event where teams of artists, developers, and enthusiasts create games based on a specific theme, fostering collaboration and creativity. The Global Game Jam (GGJ), one of the largest events of its kind, recently saw over 10,000 participants from 63 countries working on more than 3,000 game projects, aiming to surpass its own Guinness World Record for size. Participants, like those from Venezuela, share their experiences and highlight notable games such as "EKG Runner" and "Meat Makes Us Go," which are developed using open-source platforms like GitHub for collaboration and distribution. These events encourage sharing and remixing of game projects under licenses like CC-BY-NC-SA, with developers leveraging platforms like GitHub Pages for hosting. The spirit of game jams emphasizes innovation, community, and the open sharing of creative work.

GitHub has introduced support for relative links in markup files, allowing users to link directly between different documentation files, whether viewed on GitHub or locally with a different markup renderer. This update enables easier navigation within a project's documentation, as users can now replace absolute links with relative ones, enhancing the flexibility and portability of documents. The change also encourages users to update any workaround links previously used. This improvement facilitates documentation that can stand independently without always needing to reference GitHub. For more detailed guidance, GitHub offers a help article.

GitHub Enterprise's latest release introduces a range of new features and improvements aimed at enhancing user experience and administrative efficiency. Key updates include the introduction of Issue Attachments, Task Lists, and Zen Writing Mode, alongside functionalities like creating and deleting branches, viewing past contributions, and improving code search. Enterprise-specific enhancements include the much-requested repository archives feature, allowing users to download zip or tarball archives of repositories, and support for multiple admin SSH keys. The release also features a new Management Console API for managing settings and maintenances, an updated Admin Tools Dashboard for better usability, and faster configuration runs. Additionally, the release introduces a deleted repository restoration process and a Search Indexing API for improved search capabilities, ensuring that administrators and users alike can benefit from these streamlined and robust enhancements.

Programming often involves managing sensitive information like passwords, OAuth tokens, and private keys, which must be kept secure to prevent unauthorized access. Once such information is accidentally shared, especially in a public repository, it should be considered compromised as it may become easily searchable via platforms like Google and GitHub's new Search feature. If a breach occurs, immediate action, such as changing the compromised data and purging it from repositories, is advised. Despite current issues with GitHub's code search availability, which are unrelated to the exposure of sensitive data, the operations team is working on improvements, with a detailed report on these issues expected soon.

GitHub has enhanced the way tweets with links to its repositories appear by supporting Twitter Cards, allowing tweets to display more contextual information on Twitter.com. This update means that tweets containing GitHub repository links will now show the repository's name and owner, description, and gravatar, following the username/repo-name format. Additionally, links to GitHub Gists on Twitter are also supported, improving the overall utility and visual appeal of tweets that share code links. This enhancement reflects GitHub's appreciation for the millions of tweets that circulate links to code on its platform, aiming to make them more informative at a glance.

GitHub has introduced a new Zen Mode feature designed to enhance focus and productivity by removing distractions when writing comments, issues, or pull requests. This feature, accessible through a Zen Mode button, offers two themes—light and dark—that can be switched using the interface at the top right of the window. Zen Writing Mode is particularly useful for composing regular content instead of code, making it ideal for writing documentation within projects. It is available when creating and editing files, ensuring that features like emoji, @mentions, and issue autocompletion are still functional, allowing users to maintain engagement and efficiency while working.

GitHub now allows users to view their contribution activity from any period within the past year, offering a more detailed and flexible way to track their work history. Users can click on individual days to see specific contributions or hold down the shift key and click on another day to view contributions over a selected timespan. This feature, as noted by Garrett Bjerkhoel (@dewski), enhances the ability to monitor and review one's coding activities.

GitHub has introduced significant enhancements to its code search functionality, unveiling a new search infrastructure powered by an ElasticSearch cluster that indexes code in real-time as it is pushed to the platform. This upgrade ensures that search results are relevant and include only public and private repositories accessible to the user, while excluding repository forks unless they surpass the parent repository in stars. The code search landing page has been redesigned to integrate a command bar when logged in, and an advanced search feature now allows users to filter results by criteria such as stars, forks, or file extensions. Repository results now showcase activity levels, including private repositories, and code search results include new features such as line numbers, syntax highlighting, and various search filters. Additionally, the user results page has been streamlined to provide accurate results and the option to follow users directly from the search results.

GitHub has updated its functionality for closing issues via commit messages, allowing issues to be automatically closed only when the commit is merged into the default branch, typically "master." This change ensures that an issue's status accurately reflects its resolution in the default branch, preventing premature closure if the fix is not yet merged. If a commit with syntax like "Fixes #33" is made in a non-default branch, the issue is referenced with a tooltip, and users can modify their default branch settings if they primarily work on another branch. The keywords "close," "closes," "closed," "fixes," and "fixed" can all be used to trigger this behavior, providing flexibility in managing issue statuses.

An event was held at Martins West in Redwood City, California, inviting people to gather for drinks and socialize in a casual setting. The gathering took place in the back room of the venue on Wednesday, January 23rd, at 8 pm. Following the event, an update was provided with several photos to commemorate the evening. The event was organized by Lee Reilly, a Senior Program Manager at GitHub Developer Relations, known for his involvement in open-source projects, AI, hackathons, and community management.

GitHub representatives are visiting Tokyo to attend a GitHub Enterprise meetup organized by GREE, and they invite attendees to join them for a complimentary beer at the August Beer Club in Roppongi. The event will take place on Thursday, January 24th, from 8 PM to 11 PM, and offers an opportunity for networking and socializing in a casual setting.

GitHub, launched in April 2008, has reached a milestone with the registration of its three millionth user during an all-hands winter summit, highlighting rapid growth in its developer community. The platform reached its first million users by September 2011 and its second million by August 2012, with the latest million joining in just the past five months, illustrating its increasing popularity among developers who collaborate to build software. As GitHub anticipates hosting its five millionth repository soon, the platform continues to play a crucial role in the software development ecosystem. The community is invited to celebrate these achievements at an event in San Francisco, expressing gratitude for the support and contributions from its users.

GitHub has introduced a new feature that allows users to view and sort long-running Pull Requests directly from the repository's Pull Request page. This feature addresses the challenge of managing Pull Requests that remain open for extended periods without being completed or closed. By identifying Pull Requests that have been open for more than a month but have seen recent activity, this tool helps developers and project managers investigate and address any issues preventing their resolution. The filter sorts these long-running Pull Requests by their life span, which is the duration from their creation to the most recent activity, thus facilitating better project management and oversight.

GitHub has introduced new features that allow users to create and delete branches directly from their website, enhancing the user experience by simplifying branch management. When creating a branch, users can type a new branch name in the repository’s branch selector, and the new branch will be created from the current context, whether it is a specific branch, commit, or tag. The platform also offers a delete button on the Branches page, and if a branch is associated with a Pull Request, a link to it is provided. Users can make small changes such as documentation edits directly in the browser without cloning the repository, and they can create branches, edit files, and send Pull Requests all within the web interface. Additionally, a feature has been added that allows users to restore a deleted branch, adding flexibility and convenience to branch management.

GitHub has introduced a feature enhancement to its Markdown pipeline by supporting task lists, which are lists with items marked as either incomplete or complete using checkboxes. This feature allows users to manage tasks more effectively by checking or unchecking items directly within the Markdown text, automatically updating the status. The task lists make it easier to break down larger issues and reduce the need for numerous small issues, thus improving focus on task management. The enhancement aligns with Markdown's design goal of maintaining readability in plain text, ensuring that documents remain publishable without appearing overly formatted. Additionally, issues and pull requests containing task list items now have a summary feature that provides an overview in the pull request listing and any cross-references.

A special party is being hosted next week at Public Works in San Francisco as part of a January summit for GitHub employees. The event, scheduled for Thursday, January 17th from 8 PM to 2 AM, invites all 143 GitHub employees and additional guests to join in the celebration and dance. Attendees are encouraged to sign up for the event, which is organized by Rob Sanheim, and promises a lively evening at the venue located at 161 Erie Street, San Francisco.

GitHub has introduced a new feature allowing users to restore any head branch of a closed Pull Request, addressing concerns about accidentally deleting branches that are still needed. This update follows a recent enhancement that enables users to tidy up their Pull Requests, providing more control and flexibility in managing their code repositories. Written by Risk Olson, this feature aims to improve the user experience by ensuring that important branches can be easily retrieved and restored, thereby preventing potential workflow disruptions.

Garrett Bjerkhoel invites individuals in Las Vegas or those attending CES to join him for drinks hosted by GitHub at The Chandelier inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The event is scheduled for Thursday, January 10th, from 7 to 9 PM, providing an opportunity for networking and socializing in a lively setting.

GitHub has introduced a new feature called Contributions to enhance profile pages, allowing users to visually track and showcase their activity on the platform. This feature highlights popular repositories created by users based on the number of stars and watchers they receive, and it also shows repositories that users have contributed to, emphasizing recent impactful activities such as commits, issues, and Pull Requests. The Contributions Calendar provides a visual representation of a user's activity over the past year, offering the ability to annotate personal events like vacations or graduations. Additionally, the Contribution Activity section offers a concise overview of a user's proposals, issues, and commits, providing insight into their participation and engagement in projects across GitHub.

Los Angeles, known for its sprawling geography, presents a challenge when organizing events due to the need to accommodate both eastsiders and westsiders. To address this, a strategy of hosting events in pairs has been proposed, starting with an upcoming gathering on the east side at Golden Road Brewery in Glendale on January 9th. The event, hosted by Daniel Hengeveld and others, offers complimentary drinks from 8 to 11 PM and is designed to engage local residents, with a future promise of a subsequent event on the west side to ensure inclusivity.

GitHub Pages has received an upgrade with the integration of Jekyll 0.12.0, featuring enhancements contributed by the community to streamline the process of publishing aesthetically pleasing pages for users and their projects. Key improvements in this release include support for fenced code blocks, enhanced Liquid error reporting, greater control over included directories, improved syntax highlighting for various languages, and several bug fixes. Users are encouraged to review the changelog for a comprehensive list of changes.

GitHub's introduction of a MakerBot Replicator 2 led to the development of "make-me," a tool designed to streamline 3D printing by integrating with Hubot to manage print tasks. This initiative emerged from the need to eliminate the inconvenience of connecting laptops to the printer and to allow all employees access to printing without the need for SD card writers. Make-me combines various open-source projects and offers an HTTP API that allows for single print jobs, requiring manual unlocks to prevent overlapping tasks, and uses a webcam to monitor print progress. The system connects to a computer running OS X, enabling remote monitoring and management of prints. Users can send STL files to the printer and adjust settings like scale and quality through a command-line interface or Hubot script. The project, still evolving with new features, invites community collaboration to improve and expand its functionality, aiming to enhance 3D printing accessibility and efficiency.

Detroit is set to host MongoDB Detroit on January 9th, offering a free registration event that aims to celebrate both coding and community. The gathering will take place at Traffic Jam Detroit, located at 511 West Canfield Street, starting at 9:00 PM, where attendees will have the opportunity to connect with others and enjoy complimentary drinks. Key figures such as @juliamae, @bkeepers, @asenchi, and Matt Graham (@mattgraham) will be present, promising an evening of camaraderie and good times as the city kicks off 2013 with this exciting meetup.

Copying long lines of text and SHAs (Secure Hash Algorithms) to your clipboard has been simplified over the years, and recent updates have further enhanced this functionality by integrating the ZeroClipboard library. ZeroClipboard allows developers to attach a Flash object, which is currently the most reliable method for transferring data to the clipboard, to any DOM element. This upgrade not only facilitates easier integration with websites but also offers flexibility in styling the clipboard buttons according to developers' preferences, thereby improving user interaction with the site.