October 2016 Summaries

Patchwork, a collaborative event hosted by GitHub and Condé Nast in Austin, invites beginners to Git and GitHub, as well as mentors, to an informal workshop on November 15. This self-directed learning experience offers modules on Git and GitHub, requiring no prior coding knowledge, and encourages participants to learn at their own pace with the support of community mentors. Attendees will leave with practical skills, such as having a merged pull request and a square on their contributions graph, while mentors have the opportunity to guide newcomers in open source contributions. The event promises a casual atmosphere with food, refreshments, and a chance to network, and is accessible to individuals with disabilities. Attendees are encouraged to RSVP and create a free GitHub account prior to the event to ensure a smooth start.

A programming error in GitHub's system led to the inadvertent exposure of data from 156 private repositories, including one belonging to GitHub, due to a bug in their deployment that misrouted Git requests. This issue was not a result of an external attack but rather an internal fault in the connection handling code of their Rails application, affecting a small percentage of Git operations. The bug caused some Git requests to retrieve data from incorrect repositories, leading to potential disclosure of repository histories, although no data integrity issues were found with Git pushes. GitHub has notified affected users and is taking preventive measures by updating its database driver and connection pool management to prevent future occurrences. The company emphasizes the importance of trust and is committed to learning from this incident to enhance its systems and processes.

GitHub has expanded its Projects feature to the Organization level, allowing all users within an organization to access and collaborate on projects across multiple repositories. This functionality enables teams to efficiently plan and manage work by providing visibility into ongoing efforts, reducing the duplication of work. Organization-wide projects can incorporate issues and pull requests from any repository within the organization, although visibility is restricted if a repository is not accessible to certain users. Initially launched in September 2016, this feature continues to evolve, and further updates are anticipated.

Hiroshi “Nahi” Nakamura is a prominent figure in the Ruby programming community and serves as a Site Reliability Engineer and Software Engineer at Treasure Data. With over 25 years of experience in software development, Nahi has contributed significantly to Ruby through various projects and libraries, including his early work on a logger library that evolved into part of Ruby's Standard Library. His journey began with a fascination for programming languages like Perl and Common Lisp, which encouraged him to enhance their functionalities. Nahi emphasizes the importance of participating in open source communities, as this has been instrumental in shaping his career and influencing his professional work. He advocates for the integration of open source practices in enterprise IT to address the unpredictability of business needs and believes that open source contributions can significantly benefit the corporate sector. Despite not contributing to Ruby recently, Nahi remains influential in guiding the expansion and maintenance of its ecosystem, and he continues to encourage new developers to engage with open communities to foster growth and innovation.

Octicons, which are iconic symbols used within GitHub, are designed for sharing and can now be obtained as vinyl sticker packs through the GitHub Shop, providing an opportunity for enthusiasts to distribute them among friends.

The open-source community on GitHub has been instrumental in releasing some of the world's most impactful technologies, with stars serving as a key indicator of a project’s success and community interest. Notable open-source releases since 2015 include Swift, an Apple programming language that achieved 23,097 stars in its first week, and Tensorflow, Google's machine learning library, with 11,822 stars. Other significant projects are React Native by Facebook, with 10,976 stars, and Yarn, a JavaScript dependency manager by Facebook, Exponent, Google, and Tilde, which garnered 16,068 stars. The success of these projects underscores the importance of early community engagement to build momentum, attracting a diverse array of contributors and users that help the projects thrive. This information was compiled using data from GitHub Archive, accessible through Google BigQuery.

GitHub has released octocatalog-diff, an open-source tool designed to optimize the testing of Puppet code by enabling developers to preview changes across various roles without directly accessing the Puppet master. This tool, which originated as an internal solution to expedite GitHub's Puppet code testing, performs a "catalog difference" test in under three minutes, significantly reducing manual testing time and enhancing deployment confidence. Unlike other existing Puppet testing methods that require extensive access and manual oversight, octocatalog-diff allows developers to see the impact of their code changes efficiently, thereby facilitating quicker iterations and minimizing the risk of unexpected side effects. The tool's features include catalog comparison between different Git branches, prediction of differences due to fact changes, caching for faster subsequent runs, and the ability to ignore known changes. It has been instrumental in GitHub's major Puppet upgrades and transitions, and it is now offered to the community under the MIT license, inviting contributions to enhance its functionality and compatibility.

GitHub emphasizes creating a safe and inclusive environment for its diverse community of developers by introducing Community Guidelines that outline expected behaviors and actions that may breach their Terms of Service. These guidelines focus on fostering a respectful community, addressing offensive content, prohibiting harmful behaviors such as threats and harassment, and detailing consequences for rule violations. They encourage project maintainers to moderate discussions and rely on community members to report abuse, without GitHub actively seeking out content to moderate. Released under the Creative Commons Zero License, GitHub invites feedback on these guidelines to encourage similar standards across other platforms and aims to finalize them with community input by November 20, 2016.

InnerSource, which involves applying open source development practices within corporate environments, has been adopted by numerous large organizations to enhance their development processes. At the GitHub Universe event, a panel moderated by Kakul Srivastava, GitHub's VP of Product Management, featured executives from Bloomberg, Line, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Walmart, and IBM, who shared their experiences with InnerSource. They discussed the transformative impact of these practices, noting improvements such as increased collaboration across previously siloed teams, reduced bottlenecks, and enhanced project communication. Jeremy King of Walmart highlighted how InnerSource allows teams to contribute solutions to existing problems without disrupting project roadmaps, leading to innovations like shorter shipping times and community development. The panelists underscored that while InnerSource is beneficial for large-scale operations, its collaborative and creative principles can also advantage teams of any size, fostering a more open and effective workflow.

Taplytics is now included in the GitHub Student Developer Pack, offering mobile testing tools to students free for six months. The platform provides comprehensive resources for mobile developers, including A/B testing, push notifications, and custom analytics, which help in refining app user experiences. Students can conduct visual tests on their apps, make informed design choices, and receive actionable analytics for future improvements. Additionally, Taplytics offers tools that ensure users receive pertinent information at optimal times. The Student Developer Pack, which features various top-tier developer tools from companies like Datadog and Unreal Engine, empowers students to enhance their development skills with access to industry-standard resources.

Pull request reviews are crucial for maintaining high-quality, bug-free software, but they can sometimes inadvertently hinder progress, especially if a reviewer who has requested changes becomes unavailable. To address this, a new feature allows pull request collaborators to dismiss reviews, converting change requests into review comments, thereby unblocking the pull request for merging. This feature also permits the dismissal of approving reviews if significant changes have been made to the pull request, necessitating another review. To prevent misuse and ensure accountability, any team member who dismisses a review must provide a reason, thereby maintaining the integrity of the protected branch review process.

GitHub's annual Game Off returns in November, inviting participants to create games based on a secret theme to be announced on November 1st. This year's event is more inclusive, allowing submissions for any platform, operating system, or device, unlike previous years which restricted entries to web-based games. The use of open-source engines, libraries, and tools is encouraged, although not mandatory. The competition has a history of impressive entries, and the organizers are eager to see what participants will create this year. The official hashtag for the event is #ggo16, and the announcement was made by Lee Reilly, Senior Program Manager at GitHub Developer Relations.