November 2018 Summaries

The analysis of GitHub activity, based on the 2018 State of the Octoverse report, reveals how time influences collaboration on the platform, highlighting global trends and the seasonality of contributions. Despite varying schedules, users worldwide prioritize time for significant projects and personal well-being, with activity patterns showing morning peaks, midday breaks, and evening contributions, especially in public and open source repositories. Weekly trends indicate a mid-week surge in contributions, particularly to private repositories, while weekends remain quieter across the board. Seasonal breaks align with global holidays, such as New Year's Day, Chinese New Year, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving, during which activity significantly decreases, demonstrating the universal need for time off and the impact of cultural events on work patterns.

Major League Hacking’s (MLH) 5th annual Local Hack Day, scheduled for December 1, is a global hackathon celebrating learning, building, and sharing, with over 200 locations worldwide. Participants, regardless of experience level, can join local tech communities to create projects ranging from websites to robots. The event also offers educational workshops and networking opportunities, with access to the GitHub Education Pack for developer tools and GitHub swag. GitHub, hosting the event for the third year, provides support through GitHub Campus Experts at some locations. The 2017 event attracted over 6,000 participants across 34 countries, and this year's event is expected to be even larger. Participants are encouraged to spread the word using the hashtag #LocalHackDay on social media platforms.

GitHub participated in Paris Digital Week events, including the Paris Peace Forum and the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, to advocate for cybersecurity and open source community governance. They joined the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, emphasizing the role of developers in protecting digital infrastructure from cyberattacks. GitHub promoted open source projects as models for community governance, highlighting their ability to create safe and inclusive spaces for collaboration. They shared best practices for community management and discussed how these practices could be applied beyond open source contexts. The events underscored the importance of collective action among governments, businesses, and developers to foster peace, security, and trust on the internet. Abby Vollmer, GitHub's Director of Platform Policy and Counsel, emphasized the critical role of developers in these initiatives, both in creating secure software and in shaping policy.

The 2018 State of the Octoverse report from GitHub's Data Science Team provides an analysis of the popularity and trends of programming languages on GitHub. JavaScript emerges as the most popular language, with the highest number of repositories and contributors globally, driven in part by the advent of Node.js, which enables the use of the same code for both client and server. TypeScript has gained significant traction, entering the top 10 for public, private, and open-source repositories, particularly in South America and Africa, possibly due to these regions having newer developer communities. While Ruby's popularity is declining, other languages like Python and JavaScript are experiencing faster growth. The report also highlights the rise of statically-typed languages such as Kotlin, TypeScript, and Rust, which offer type safety and interoperability benefits, contributing to their increasing adoption. The open-source nature of these languages fosters community support and resource creation, enhancing their appeal to developers working on large applications.

GitHub Desktop 1.5 marks a significant step in enhancing collaboration and easing the merge process, building on previous updates that introduced branch comparison and conflict notifications. This release completes the merge collaboration cycle by allowing users to initiate merges from the branch dropdown, guiding them through conflict resolution, and indicating when merges are complete. It also improves onboarding with options to clone and add new repositories directly from the repository dropdown. User feedback has been integral to these updates, and the release highlights contributions from the open-source community, showcasing a collaborative effort in enhancing GitHub Desktop's functionality. The update underscores GitHub's commitment to integrating user feedback and community involvement in its development process.

GitHub is participating in AWS re:Invent from November 26-30 in Las Vegas, Nevada, to showcase how its platform integrates with AWS, enabling teams to collaborate effectively while focusing on coding. Attendees can visit GitHub's booth at the Expo to engage in booth sessions, including deploying to AWS Lambda with GitHub and Jenkins, creating GitHub Actions, and exploring AWS Security Automation Orchestration. GitHub Solutions Engineers will be available for one-on-one meetings to provide insights into GitHub's business applications. A highlighted session by Cox Automotive will discuss their experience using GitHub Enterprise on AWS, emphasizing process improvements with Terraform. Participants are encouraged to follow updates via GitHub's social media and register for sessions in advance.

Celebrating its second anniversary, Code.gov, which originated from the Federal Source Code policy, has facilitated the sharing of over 5,200 government projects, with more than 75% of its 4,800 publicly accessible projects hosted on GitHub. Notable government agencies, such as NASA and the U.S. Army, are leveraging GitHub to collaborate and share resources with the global open-source community, exemplified by projects like NASA's 3D Resources and the Department of Energy's ZFS file system. These projects are being embraced by both public and private sectors, with significant contributions from institutions like the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is developing the exascale system Aurora. An analysis of GitHub usage by the government community highlights popular projects by stars, forks, watchers, and contributors, revealing a vibrant ecosystem of collaboration and innovation. Code.gov champions open-source accessibility, encouraging civic engagement and innovation through digital platforms, and actively invites participation via social media channels.

GitHub has reached the significant milestone of hosting 100 million repositories, driven by its vibrant community of 31 million developers from nearly every corner of the globe. This achievement underscores the platform's evolution since its inception in 2008, when it hosted just 33,000 repositories. The growth reflects an increasing trend of repository creation, with one-third of all repositories established in the past year, emphasizing GitHub's role as a hub for innovation and collaboration. Open source projects, such as Rails, Node.js, Swift, .NET, and Python, exemplify the platform's influence in advancing developer tools and community engagement. Recent trends show a surge in projects related to machine learning, game development, and full-stack JavaScript, highlighting the diverse interests of the community. Geographic diversity is also expanding, with notable contributions from Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, particularly from countries like Egypt and Nigeria, where emerging tech communities are on the rise. GitHub celebrates this milestone as a testament to the global effort in pushing software development forward and looks forward to future innovations from its community.

GitHub for Visual Studio has introduced a new feature that saves drafts of code comments and pull request summaries, enhancing the user experience by preventing the loss of in-progress comments. This update involves saving comment drafts to a SQLite database, ensuring they are readily available when users return, even after switching contexts or restarting Visual Studio. The feature supports seamless transitions during pull request reviews, allowing users to navigate away and back without losing their progress on comments or summaries. Users are encouraged to try this new capability and provide feedback through the repository or on Twitter.

The article highlights the rapid growth of Nigeria's tech community, driven by economic changes, expanding educational opportunities, and wider internet access, as detailed in the GitHub Data Science Team's State of Octoverse report. The country has seen significant increases in the number of developers, organizations, and repositories on GitHub, making it one of the fastest-growing developer communities. This growth is supported by a burgeoning startup ecosystem, particularly in fintech, with companies like AmplifyPay, Paga, and PayStack leading the way in transforming financial services. Furthermore, GitHub Education and Campus Experts programs foster community and skill development among Nigerian students, who are organizing events and coding camps to nurture the next generation of developers. This momentum in Nigeria's developer landscape is expected to continue into the future, as more initiatives and investments bolster the tech sector.

GitHub has announced its support for the GPL Cooperation Commitment, joining 40 other software companies in an effort to enhance fairness and certainty for users of key projects like Git and the Linux kernel. The commitment aims to improve the effectiveness of software regulation by allowing violators of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) to have their licenses reinstated if violations are promptly corrected, addressing a key limitation of GPLv2. This initiative is seen as aligning with GitHub’s values of empowering developers and communities, and it encourages both private and public policymakers to focus on effective regulation that supports open-source licensing. The GPL Cooperation Commitment serves as an example of evolving software regulation to better meet social goals, and GitHub invites other companies and individuals to join this effort.

GitHub Field Day is an innovative "unconference" designed to connect and support student leaders in technical communities by facilitating collaboration and sharing experiences. Initiated by Wilhelm Klopp, the event addresses isolation and frustration often felt by students working independently on open-source projects by providing a platform for brainstorming, learning from mistakes, and gaining face-to-face support. Each Field Day is unique, with regional adaptations reflecting local needs and interests, as seen in events held in Los Angeles, Montreal, Mexico City, and New York City. These gatherings encourage participants to propose discussion topics, engage in collaborative sessions, and share insights on overcoming common challenges like recruitment, onboarding, and community building. Through activities like icebreakers and structured brainstorming sessions, Field Days foster a welcoming environment where students can connect, exchange ideas, and build networks across campuses. The initiative has grown globally, emphasizing the importance of community support and peer learning in the technical field.

Git LFS v2.6.0, the latest version of the Git extension for handling large files, introduces enhanced authentication mechanisms that differentiate between API and storage requests, improving security and functionality. The update also includes new options for the git lfs checkout command, which facilitate resolving merge conflicts by allowing users to compare and manually select from different versions of conflicting files. Additional improvements in this version encompass a variety of bug fixes, support for new platforms including arm64, and expanded configuration options, enhancing its overall usability and compatibility.

Two weeks after the release of the "suggested changes" feature, which enables users to propose modifications to code in a pull request, more than 10 percent of reviewers have utilized it to make over 100,000 suggestions, with nearly four percent of review comments containing a suggestion. This rapid adoption indicates its integration into code review workflows, supported by feedback from over 2,500 users. The most common requests for improvement include the ability to suggest changes to multiple lines simultaneously and to accept multiple changes in a single commit, highlighting areas for future development. The creators value user feedback to enhance the feature and encourage continued use and suggestions.

Game Off is an annual month-long game jam organized by GitHub, where participants create games based on the theme "HYBRID" from November 1 to December 1. Participants are encouraged to interpret the theme creatively, possibly by blending different genres, visual styles, or music elements, and can work individually or in teams. They need to sign up on GitHub and itch.io, create a public GitHub repository for their game code and assets, and submit their entry on itch.io before the deadline. Participants can use open-source software and vote on submissions after the jam concludes, with highlighted favorites showcased on the GitHub Blog. The event supports newcomers to Git, GitHub, and version control by providing resources and encourages the use of various programming languages and game engines. The official hashtag for the event is #GitHubGameOff, and it's supported by Lee Reilly, a Senior Program Manager at GitHub.