September 2016 Summaries

Hacktoberfest is a month-long event in October organized by DigitalOcean and hosted on GitHub that encourages contributions to open source projects. Participants can engage by opening pull requests to fix bugs, add features, or enhance documentation in any open source project. First-time contributors can refer to a guide on contributing to open source, and those who complete four pull requests by the end of the month receive a t-shirt as a reward. Participants are encouraged to share their contributions on social media using the #hacktoberfest hashtag. More information can be found on the Hacktoberfest website.

GitHub has introduced a new "Rebase and merge" option for pull requests, enhancing its existing functionalities of merge commits and commit squashing. This feature allows commits from a pull request's branch to be rebased onto the tip of the base branch, which is then fast-forwarded to the newly rebased head, without altering the pull request's branch. The rebasing process retains the original authorship information while updating the committer to the current user. If conflicts occur during the rebase, users are notified to resolve them manually. Repository administrators have the ability to enable or disable this option within the repository settings, and further details are available in GitHub's Help documentation.

GitHub developed a new load balancer, called GLB (GitHub Load Balancer), to address the limitations of its existing monolithic, vertically scaled load balancing system, which could not meet the demands of its growing infrastructure. The new system runs on commodity hardware, scales horizontally, and is designed to handle high availability, connection draining, and support for multiple services per load balancer host. It employs a L4/L7 split design, using Equal-Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) routing for efficient traffic distribution across multiple servers, and incorporates a stateless director tier using Rendezvous hashing for consistent time lookups. This approach allows for graceful removal of nodes without disrupting user connections and aims to ensure seamless operations even in the event of node failure or maintenance. The GLB's design is optimized for resilience against DDoS attacks and provides tools for future attack mitigation, with plans to release its components as open-source software.

GitHub has introduced a feature that displays licenses in the repository overview, making it easier for users to see if a project has an open source license. This update is now live on GitHub and will be included in the upcoming Enterprise 2.8 release. The feature uses the open source Ruby gem Licensee to compare a repository’s LICENSE file with a list of known licenses, linking a shortened license name to the repository’s license file. While not all licenses or complex licensing situations are detected, users can still access the project’s license details as before. This enhancement underscores GitHub’s commitment to open source, emphasizing the importance of adding an open source license to facilitate broader use, modification, and contribution to projects.

GitHub Universe, held in San Francisco, brought together over 1,500 developers to discuss open source, workplace best practices, and community-driven software development, featuring keynote speeches from GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath and other notable figures like Kimberly Bryant from Black Girl's Code and Alvand Salehi from the White House. The event unveiled new features such as improved code reviews and Projects for better project management, along with platform updates including the GitHub GraphQL API and Integrations Early Access. Breakout sessions focused on product updates and fostering diverse engineering teams, while the event culminated in a benefit concert for Black Girls Code, headlined by COMMON. The gathering highlighted GitHub's commitment to enhancing developer collaboration and inclusivity, supported by sponsors who contributed to the event's vibrant atmosphere.

Spanish Octocats are invited to a workshop on Thursday, September 22, hosted by BeBanjo and GitHub, focusing on software development experiences. The program includes an introduction to Git and GitHub, a presentation by BeBanjo developer Miguel A. Arroyo on startup software development, and a live GitHub demo by GitHub engineer Alain Helaili. The event will take place from 10:30 am to 1 pm at La Nave Nodriza in Madrid, with coffee and pastries provided. Interested participants should register by emailing [email protected] before September 19.

GitHub Universe offers a comprehensive virtual experience for those unable to attend in person, with all sessions being recorded and live-streamed on the event's website. The lineup includes a keynote by GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath, a live podcast by Roman Mars, and a fireside chat with Quip's CEO, Bret Taylor. The event features discussions on data transparency by Clarence Wardell from the USDS, explores AI's role in creative writing with Benjamin, Oscar Sharp, and Ross Goodwin, and addresses open-source challenges with insights from companies like Salesforce and Netsuite. Participants can also learn about improving time-to-market and ROI with InnerSource, and hear strategies for enhancing diversity and inclusion from industry leaders such as Bloomberg, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Walmart, and IBM.

At the second annual Universe conference in San Francisco, GitHub announced significant platform updates aimed at enhancing collaboration, project management, and integration for developers. The updates include improved code review tools, an enhanced user profile experience, and a new Projects feature that allows for integrated project management directly from repositories. GitHub is also enhancing its API to facilitate better integrations and has introduced early-access programs for developers. Security measures have been strengthened with the ability to enforce two-factor authentication for organization members. Additionally, a new GitHub Community Forum is being developed to foster learning and interaction among its vast community of over 16 million developers. These enhancements are designed to make software development more efficient and collaborative, with a focus on integrating seamlessly with existing workflows and tools.

GitHub Universe celebrates the remarkable expansion and transformation of its community, now comprising over 16 million members who engage in projects like Free Code Camp and Batavia. The platform welcomed 5.2 million new developers in the past year, with significant contributions from countries such as China, Indonesia, India, Russia, Brazil, and Japan, and 800,000 members created their first pull request. GitHub emphasizes global collaboration on transformative technology, fostering a dynamic, ever-growing community of developers. The Octoverse installment in 2016 highlights this growth, with anticipation for continued expansion in 2017 and beyond.

GitHub has transitioned its API from a RESTful design to a GraphQL-based system to address scalability and flexibility challenges faced by developers. GraphQL, a data querying language developed by Facebook, allows for more efficient data retrieval by enabling clients to request exactly what they need, reducing payload sizes and enhancing performance, especially for mobile applications. This shift aims to solve two main problems with the REST API: its limited scalability due to bloated responses and lack of flexibility, which often required multiple calls to gather complete data. The transition also allows GitHub to implement type safety, introspection, and automated documentation, improving both developer experience and the transparency of the platform. GitHub has already implemented parts of its system, such as emoji reactions and social features, using GraphQL and plans to continue expanding its use across the platform. The company is also open-sourcing various tools and libraries to support this transition, aiming for wider production readiness and seamless integration between UI and API features.

Datadog has introduced their Pro plan to students through the Student Developer Pack, offering a powerful monitoring solution that encompasses metrics from various apps, tools, and services. This plan allows students to monitor up to 10 concurrent hosts, retain stock and custom metrics for up to 13 months, and create dashboards and notifications to track application performance and availability. The Student Developer Pack provides free access to top-tier developer tools from companies such as Stripe, Travis CI, and Unreal Engine, thereby equipping students with essential resources for their development projects.

GitHub Universe offers a diverse range of interactive experiences and learning opportunities, including art installations, exhibits, and sessions designed to engage attendees with GitHub experts and industry leaders. Visitors can participate in various themed lounges, each featuring unique offerings such as the Heroku Flow at the Purple Lounge, IBM Bluemix demonstrations at the Blue Lounge, and Travis CI enterprise solutions at the Green Lounge, all aimed at enhancing software development and CI/CD workflows. The conference also features the Ask GitHub lounge, where attendees can engage in one-on-one sessions with GitHub speakers, Professional Services team members, and open source experts for personalized insights. Additionally, the Demo Desk provides hands-on demonstrations of innovative technologies like Jibo, CircleCI, and Compose.io, while eye-catching art installations sponsored by companies like Axosoft, CircleCI, and Mailchimp add a creative flair to the event.

In 2016, GitHub introduced several exciting features such as issue templates, saved replies, GPG signature, and commit squashing, enhancing the platform's functionality and user experience. Building on this momentum, GitHub is gearing up for its second edition of GitHub Universe, an event designed to showcase these developments and unveil upcoming features. The event is scheduled for September 14th at Deezer's headquarters in Paris and promises to offer attendees insights into GitHub's latest advancements before they are broadly available. Attendees can enjoy food, drinks, and Octocat stickers, and are encouraged to RSVP in advance to secure their participation.

Transifex has introduced its translation and localization software to students through the Student Developer Pack, providing a free year of the Starter plan, which is valued at $99 per month. This cloud-based platform is designed to manage the translation and localization of software, allowing users to handle 50,000 hosted words, create unlimited projects, and collaborate with translation partners to reach a global audience. Students benefit from having 10 team collaborators and the ability to reuse existing translations across projects, facilitating the creation of internationally-ready software from the outset. The Student Developer Pack offers free access to top developer tools from various technology companies, including Stripe, Travis CI, and Unreal Engine, enhancing the resources available for student developers.

GitHub Universe, starting on Tuesday, September 13, at Dogpatch Studios, offers a day of specialized training for GitHub power users and DevOps specialists, accessible through a general conference ticket. The sessions for power users include topics like initiating InnerSource transformations, exploring the GitHub API, and mastering Git to handle mistakes effectively. The DevOps track covers implementing CI/CD pipelines with GitHub, optimizing integrations with tools like Heroku, ZenHub, and Snyk, and enhancing organizational transparency and security through ChatOps with Hubot. Additionally, attendees have the opportunity to engage with GitHub experts at the Ask Services booth on September 14-15 for personalized advice, available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Spokes is a robust replication system designed to ensure the durability and availability of over 38 million Git repositories and 36 million gists, by maintaining at least three copies of each across different servers. Renamed from DGit to Spokes to avoid confusion with the Git project, the system employs a combination of Git and rsync for replication, repair, and rebalancing. Spokes prioritizes consistency and partition tolerance, refusing writes it cannot commit to at least two replicas to maintain data integrity. It uses real application traffic to detect server failures and reroutes requests as necessary, with a focus on minimizing disruptions during server outages or maintenance. Durability is achieved through replication and a majority consensus protocol that ensures updates are uniformly applied across replicas, with automatic repairs initiated in case of server or disk failures. The system also supports planned maintenance through a quiescing process to avoid interrupting long-running read operations, reinforcing its commitment to data availability and resilience.

GitHub has introduced a new feature that allows upstream repository contributors to make minor changes to a pull request before merging. When a user opens a pull request from a fork, they can now enable a collaboration option that permits upstream contributors to clone the fork and, with granted permission, push changes directly to the head branch of the pull request. This feature applies to pull requests created after its introduction, but contributors can manually enable or revoke this option for existing requests through a checkbox in the pull request sidebar. More detailed guidance is available in the help guide authored by Scott J. Goldman.

Introduction to GitHub is a self-paced, online class aimed at helping users become familiar with GitHub in 30 minutes or less, offering an engaging learning experience through collaboration on a fun project and interaction with a supportive Gitter community. The course is designed to introduce participants to the realms of GitHub and open source, with GitHub Trainers available to assist and answer questions. Learners are encouraged to participate in an activity that involves marking their location on a map, showcasing the widespread reach of the course. The class is free and incorporates popular open-source projects like GitHub Classroom, Jekyll, Minimal Mistakes, and Travis CI to enhance the learning process. Even seasoned GitHub users are invited to take the course and provide feedback through a class survey, with the hope that the course will be recommended to others interested in learning about GitHub.

GitHub Universe is collaborating with Community Partners to cultivate a diverse and inclusive environment by offering conference tickets to organizations focusing on lowering barriers for underrepresented groups and making positive social impacts. These partners include Women Who Code East Bay, which provides technical resources to women globally; Year Up, offering training and internships to urban young adults to bridge the Opportunity Divide; Tech Workers Coalition, advocating for tech workers’ rights and social justice; and Code Tenderloin, which focuses on job readiness and placement for marginalized communities in San Francisco. Through these partnerships, GitHub aims to foster innovation by bringing together diverse perspectives and empowering local voices in the tech industry.

Git 2.10.0 has been released, bringing enhancements and bug fixes contributed by over 70 developers. Notable improvements include progress reporting for post-receive operations during pushes, which helps maintain network connectivity and provides user feedback, especially for large pushes. The update also enhances signature verification for GPG-signed tags and commits, introducing a new configuration option for automatic signature checks and adopting 64-bit GPG key-ids in response to vulnerabilities in the 32-bit space. Git's color output capabilities have been expanded to include italic and strikethrough attributes, and improvements have been made to HTTP debugging with the introduction of the GIT_TRACE_CURL variable. Additional updates include more efficient smart-http protocol negotiations, retry mechanisms for submodule operations in case of network issues, and enhancements to git archive and date-formatting code to support large files and future dates. The release incorporates over 600 commits, signaling a broad range of changes and improvements.

Olivia Ross, a high school sophomore at Phillips Exeter Academy, has channeled her passion for technology into game design, blending her coding skills with the humanities. After self-teaching HTML and CSS in junior high, she became involved with Black Girls CODE (BGC) in New York, where she discovered a love for coding collaboratively and a way to merge art with computer science. Her projects include a tabletop game developed for Uncharted Play and an app called SuperBlock, which was published on the App Store and showcased at the 2016 MAKERS Conference. Ross aspires to work in STEM education, creating inclusive spaces for diverse communities to explore computer science. She continues to volunteer as a technical instructor at BGC, teaching young girls how to build apps, and is also co-director of The Young Hackers, an organization hosting STEM events in NYC. Ross advises young black women interested in tech to seek out supportive communities and take advantage of opportunities designed to level the playing field.