June 2019 Summaries

GitHub Sponsors provides a platform for open source developers to receive financial support from the community, enhancing their ability to continue their projects with greater autonomy and security. Highlighted in this context is Daniel Stenberg, the founder of cURL, a widely-used tool for internet protocol-based data transfers, which boasts over six billion installations worldwide. Stenberg shares his journey of developing cURL from a simple tool for downloading currency rates in 1998 to a critical component in various devices and systems today. He discusses the challenges faced in open source maintenance, including the need for sustained development beyond new feature creation and the difficulties of aligning company priorities with project needs. His involvement in cURL has shaped his career, leading to roles in the Internet Engineering Task Force and contributions to the development of internet protocols. Stenberg emphasizes the need for more developers and the importance of community support, noting that GitHub Sponsors can play a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability and independence of open source projects like cURL.

GitHub has expanded its help documentation to include Japanese and Simplified Chinese, broadening accessibility and opportunities for the global developer community. These new language options are available on the help.github.com site, allowing users to select their preferred language from a dropdown menu, or directly access the Japanese and Simplified Chinese versions via specific URLs. The documentation, covering GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise, GitHub Desktop, and GitHub Pages, is maintained with a continuous integration system to ensure users receive the most current information. While some content may initially appear in English due to its recent addition, it will soon be translated. GitHub plans to continue expanding its language offerings to further support innovation and product development worldwide, encouraging feedback to enhance user experience.

Educators can leverage draft pull requests and review requests to instill a collaborative mindset and industry best practices in students, as exemplified by a CS1 student, Sarah, working with Dr. Root. Sarah begins her assignment by creating a draft pull request in GitHub, allowing her to iterate on her code with the help of GitHub features such as task lists, mentions for assistance, and integration with testing tools like Travis CI. Once content with her work, she requests feedback by marking the pull request as ready for review, enabling Dr. Root to provide feedback and suggest changes. This iterative process mirrors the industry’s approach to collaboration and continuous improvement in software development. The workflow not only allows educators to monitor students’ progress and identify those needing assistance but also offers various applications, such as providing preliminary feedback or incrementally grading assignments. This method encourages a practice of iteration and improvement, promoting active learning and engagement in software engineering courses.

The Noops Challenge, now in its third week, offers developers worldwide a creative opportunity to engage with new bot-based prompts that include Wordbot, Pathbot, Melodybot, Riddlebot, and Sortbot. These challenges are designed to inspire a wide range of projects, such as generating stories with random words using Wordbot, solving mazes with directional guidance from Pathbot, crafting loopable melodies with Melodybot, decrypting encoded strings with Riddlebot, and sorting values with Sortbot. Participants are encouraged to build innovative solutions, like a fill-in-the-blank story generator, a maze navigation tool, a game soundtrack, an encryption-decryption script, or a sorting algorithm, and share their creations on Twitter using the hashtag #NoopsChallenge.

GitHub is recognized for its commitment to maintaining a safe, inclusive, and collaborative platform, which involves moderating content based on legal and policy considerations. The company was highlighted in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's annual "Who Has Your Back Report" for its transparency and accountability in handling content moderation, earning five out of six stars. GitHub's approach includes publicly disclosing government takedown requests, providing meaningful notice to users about content removals, and offering an appeals mechanism, although it aims to improve transparency around appeals outcomes. The platform supports the Santa Clara Principles, which advocate for fair and respectful content moderation processes, and is dedicated to aligning its practices with these principles while contributing to broader discussions on platform governance. GitHub continues to refine its moderation practices by collaborating with industry stakeholders and leveraging emerging best practices, showcasing its dedication to evolving content moderation policies in response to legal, industry, and governmental developments.

Maintaining an open source project often involves managing contributions from the community, and using labels like "help wanted" or "good first issue" indicates issues ready for contribution. However, when multiple contributors express interest in the same issue, it can be challenging to designate one without excluding others or needing repetitive follow-ups. A new feature now allows maintainers to directly assign read-only contributors to issues they have commented on, providing them with a notification of their assignment. If a contributor cannot undertake the task, they can easily unassign themselves. This feature aims to streamline the process of assigning contributors quickly and foster a more inclusive open source community, enhancing collaboration and productivity on platforms like GitHub.

The Noops challenge is an engaging global initiative that encourages developers to creatively experiment with various bot-driven APIs. Week two introduces a fresh set of bots, including Mazebot, which generates mazes to solve, Automatabot, inspired by Conway’s Game of Life, Polybot, which provides numerous random polygons, Golfbot, which challenges participants to code with character limits, and Cambot, which invites innovative use of device sensors. The challenge aims to inspire developers to explore and create diverse projects, from visual patterns and interactive games to clever code golf solutions. Participants are encouraged to share their inventive outcomes on social media, fostering a community of creativity and collaboration.

GitHub has introduced a public beta release of the GitHub Audit log API for organizations using GitHub Enterprise, extending the GitHub GraphQL API to allow users to monitor various activities like access changes, user modifications, and permission alterations within their organizations. This API, distinct from typical RESTful services, utilizes a GraphQL interface to facilitate efficient queries for specific enterprise log entries. Users can authenticate their requests using a personal access token (PAT) and perform queries through a GraphQL client, enabling them to retrieve targeted audit log data. The API provides insights into organizational activities by returning JSON responses that contain requested information such as actions performed, the users involved, and the timing of these actions. This tool aims to help enterprises make informed, data-driven decisions about their auditing processes, with support available through GitHub's best practices and sales teams for further assistance.

GitHub Sponsors provides a platform for open-source maintainers and developers to receive funding, enabling them to continue their projects with greater freedom and financial security. Dr. Russell Keith-Magee, the founder of the BeeWare Project, exemplifies the initiative's impact by creating tools to facilitate the development of native GUI apps in Python across various platforms. His journey highlights the challenges faced by open-source contributors, including resource scarcity and the personal toll of volunteer work, which can lead to burnout and limit diversity in the community. The project emphasizes the need for specialized platform knowledge and aims to address the existential threat to Python's relevance in modern computing by making app development on tablets feasible. Magee's involvement in open source has enriched his professional and personal life, fostering connections and skill development, while GitHub Sponsors offers a path to financial sustainability for projects like BeeWare, advocating for a shift toward collective funding responsibility.

GitHub recently announced the beta release of GitHub Package Registry, a package management service that allows users to publish both public and private packages alongside their source code. Since its limited launch, the team has addressed community feedback by fixing issues, enhancing performance, and partnering with Apple to integrate with Swift Package Manager. A crucial update to the service is the revision of the deletion policy, which now prohibits the deletion of packages or versions through the GitHub UI or APIs to prevent project disruptions, although exceptions can be handled through GitHub Support. The service is expanding with 2,000 additional accounts added to the beta, and more features are expected as they continue to gather user feedback to refine the product further.

Major League Hacking (MLH) offers support to students and educators preparing for the new school year by providing ready-made workshops, such as their MLH Localhost series, which includes a new workshop on using Git and GitHub collaboratively. This workshop is designed to help students learn version control terminology, best practices, and real-world coding skills, which are crucial for future professional developers. It covers essential topics like forking, branching, committing, and merging, allowing participants to work on projects collaboratively, such as adding their hometowns to a global map. Through practical exercises, participants gain a broader understanding of GitHub beyond code storage, recognizing it as a platform for real-time or asynchronous collaboration. MLH simplifies event planning by providing comprehensive resources, including a facilitator’s guide, presentation materials, and promotional items, ensuring that organizers can focus on building community rather than event logistics.

GitHub has acquired Pull Panda to enhance code review workflows, aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness for software teams of all sizes by addressing delays caused by accumulating pull requests. Pull Panda offers three main features: Pull Reminders, which notify users through Slack when their input is needed, ensuring no pull requests are overlooked; Pull Analytics, providing real-time insights into team performance to facilitate data-driven improvements; and Pull Assigner, which distributes code tasks evenly to prevent overload and promote knowledge sharing. These features are now available for free as a GitHub Marketplace application, with plans for further integration into GitHub's platform, and feedback is encouraged to refine how developers collaborate on the platform.

GitHub Sponsors allows open source maintainers like Henry Zhu, who works full-time on the Babel compiler, to receive community funding, providing them with the financial stability to continue their projects. Babel, originally created by Sebastian McKenzie, enables developers to use the latest JavaScript versions while maintaining compatibility with older browsers, becoming a key tool in the developer ecosystem despite its low visibility. Zhu's involvement with Babel has been transformative, enabling him to leave his previous job and focus on open source development, while also raising crucial questions about the challenges and priorities in open source, such as sustainability, leadership, and community well-being. GitHub Sponsors, unlike other platforms, doesn't take a percentage of the sponsorships, which aligns with Zhu's vision of fostering a supportive community rather than a transactional relationship, encouraging sponsors to see beyond mere code contributions to a broader engagement with the project's future.

Atom's development team has significantly enhanced the efficiency of some of its most popular features, notably the fuzzy finder, which now includes an experimental fast mode in version 1.38, allowing for substantially quicker file opening and search operations. This new mode accelerates project indexing by approximately six times and boosts the speed of displaying filtered results by about 11 times, marking a noticeable improvement in user productivity. The upcoming Atom version 1.39 aims to make this fast mode the default setting and will further optimize the performance of the find and replace package, promising search speeds up to 20 times faster. These advancements have been made possible by leveraging the contributions of the open-source community, particularly the ripgrep project by @BurntSushi and the fuzzy-native project by @hansonw, which underpin the enhanced functionality of Atom's fuzzy finder and search capabilities.

GitHub Sponsors is a platform designed to financially support open source developers by connecting them with sponsors, driven by a commitment to making open source more sustainable and accessible. The initiative emerged from extensive research and a strong belief in the value of open source by GitHub employees, who are passionate about supporting the human effort behind open source software. GitHub has implemented a matching fund to encourage community-driven sponsorships and is taking steps to ensure sponsorships are diverse and inclusive. The platform initially focuses on individual developers but plans to expand to support corporate sponsors and teams, aiming to enhance the open source ecosystem. The program prioritizes iterative development and community feedback to refine and expand its offerings.

Developers are being invited to explore their creativity and have fun with code through a summer project involving the Noops, a set of 20 machines designed to emit data signals without performing any specific function. Each Noop, described as a black box, produces unique outputs such as hex color codes from Hexbot, coordinate streams from Vexbot, instructions from Directbot, beat sequences from Drumbot, and Fizzbuzz challenges from Fizzbot. Participants can interact with these machines using any programming language capable of making HTTP requests, with starter code available in JavaScript. The project encourages developers of all skill levels to engage with the Noops, experiment with the data they emit, and share their innovative ideas on a forum, fostering a community of playful and creative coding.

Erica Brescia expresses her enthusiasm for joining GitHub as Chief Operating Officer, highlighting her excitement about contributing to the company's mission of enabling global collaboration among developers. With a background as a software company founder and extensive experience in the open-source software world, she appreciates GitHub's impact on software development and community collaboration. Brescia is particularly drawn to GitHub's commitment to remote work and its globally distributed team, which she believes attracts top talent. Her initial focus as COO will be on scaling the Support, Business Development, and Workplace Experience teams, while her role will adapt as the company's needs change. She is eager to help GitHub grow and optimize its operations, viewing her new position as a thrilling opportunity to build on the company's successes and explore its future potential.

Git 2.22 introduces a range of new features and improvements contributed by over 74 developers, including 18 new contributors. Among the highlights, the update enhances the interactive rebase process with the introduction of the --rebase-merges option, which preserves the branching structure while allowing full interactivity. It also simplifies the creation of branches from merge bases using the triple-dot syntax and introduces the git branch --show-current command for easily identifying the current branch. Additionally, the update improves checkout behavior with the --no-overlay option and enhances the consistency of command-line options parsing through the parse-options API. Git 2.22 also introduces the Trace2 tracing mechanism for performance and telemetry data and refines directory rename detection. Furthermore, bisect now provides more informative output with a full --stat diff, and reachability bitmaps are generated by default in bare repositories to speed up fetch operations.

GitHub has introduced repository templates to streamline the process of managing and distributing boilerplate code across different projects, making it easier for developers to bootstrap new projects with their preferred tools and directory structures. By marking a repository as a template, users can quickly generate new repositories with the same files and folders, thanks to the new "Use this template" button and a dedicated URL endpoint called /generate. This feature is designed to facilitate efficient project setup, whether for building an app boilerplate or distributing a project framework, allowing developers to focus more on creating new projects rather than repetitive setup tasks. GitHub plans to enhance the capabilities of these templates further, including for repositories, issues, and pull requests, and encourages users to share feedback to improve the feature.

GitHub Desktop 2.0 has been released, introducing features like easier resolution of merge conflicts, co-authoring commits, and checking out GitHub pull requests, while also adding the highly requested support for rebasing and stashing. The update emphasizes collaboration and accommodates various development workflows, aiming to simplify version control for both new and experienced developers. GitHub Desktop encourages a fun and supportive team dynamic with features like adding emojis to commit messages and sharing credit by mentioning co-authors. Open source collaboration is central to GitHub's ethos, with significant contributions from community members enhancing the platform. Looking ahead, GitHub plans to integrate more features from GitHub.com to GitHub Desktop, such as pull request management, to provide a seamless and productive experience for developers. The app has gained popularity, with millions of downloads and over 500,000 active monthly users, as GitHub continues to lower barriers for participation in software development.

GitHub Sponsors provides a platform for open source maintainers and developers to receive financial support from the community, allowing them to continue their work with greater autonomy and security. Sage Griffin, a notable contributor to the Rust ecosystem and co-lead of the crates.io team, shares their journey in open source development, highlighting the challenges faced, such as onboarding new contributors and managing a demanding operations team. Griffin's involvement in projects like crates.io and Diesel has been a learning experience, enhancing their communication and leadership skills. They emphasize the critical role of crates.io in the Rust community and the importance of community support through GitHub Sponsors, which helps alleviate financial pressures while maintaining the service's stability.

GitHub's recent upgrade to Ruby 2.6 has introduced an optimization that reduces memory usage by approximately 3% by eliminating the "mark array," which previously prevented garbage collection of string literals referenced in instruction sequences. Ruby's virtual machine, MRI, processes code through various phases, including tokenization, parsing, and conversion to an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) before compiling it into byte code for execution. The optimization in Ruby 2.6 involves disassembling instruction sequences to mark operands allocated by the garbage collector, thereby eliminating the need for the mark array. Despite the additional expense of disassembly, the change results in a reduction of live objects in the heap without affecting throughput, as only 30% of instruction sequences contain objects that require marking and Ruby's generational garbage collector processes them infrequently.

GitHub profiles can be enhanced by pinning gists, which are versatile tools for sharing code snippets and files, allowing users to creatively showcase their work and personal information. By using markdown, users can format text, add images, and include links, making their profiles more engaging. For instance, individuals like Gustavo and Amy utilize gifs and markdown to highlight personal achievements and provide easy access to resources like résumés or workshop recaps. Additionally, geojson can be used in gists to display maps and locations, showcasing local community impacts. Creative uses of pinned gists, such as animated elements or combining them with repository pins, allow for a dynamic presentation of a user's activities and skills. GitHub encourages students to explore these features and participate in challenges like the "Pins to Win" contest, which offers incentives such as a GitHub Education backpack for verified students who creatively share their profiles on social media.

GitHub announced the limited beta of GitHub Package Registry, a package management service that simplifies the process of publishing public or private packages alongside source code, initially supporting JavaScript, Java, Ruby, .NET, and Docker images, with plans to include more languages. The announcement includes the addition of Swift package support, which facilitates sharing libraries and source code within projects and the Swift community. The Swift Package Manager, a cross-platform tool available on GitHub, will work in conjunction with GitHub Package Registry to streamline the publication and management of Swift packages, enhancing productivity for mobile developers. GitHub collaborates with Apple to develop new workflows as the Swift ecosystem expands, expressing enthusiasm about community engagement and feedback during the beta period, with an open invitation for interested users to sign up.