August 2019 Summaries

Nearly 20,000 teachers utilize GitHub Classroom to manage coding assignments and automate the creation of repositories, especially to distribute starter code to students, but the replication feature was previously slow and unreliable. This issue, which caused delays and failures in repository creation, was addressed by two GitHub interns, Eric Pickup and Shaunak Pagnis, who implemented a solution using template repositories. Template repositories, a built-in GitHub feature, allow teachers to use their starter code as a template, significantly improving the speed and reliability of repository creation. Since this update, over 10,000 assignment repositories have been created using this method, increasing the success rate from 95 to 99.9 percent and reducing creation times from 15 to 2.5 seconds on average. The improvement has been well-received by the community, as noted by Dan Wallach, a professor at Rice University, who expressed relief over the reduction in issues related to cloning processes. GitHub Classroom remains open-source, inviting community involvement for future enhancements.

GitHub has achieved significant milestones in security compliance by obtaining AICPA Service Organization Controls (SOC) 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance for GitHub Enterprise Cloud, ensuring data safety and enhancing developer productivity. Furthermore, the company has maintained compliance with international standards ISAE 3000 and 3402, demonstrating its commitment to global security practices. Customers using GitHub Enterprise Cloud can request audit reports through their support team, though these audits do not extend to GitHub Enterprise Server. GitHub continues to prioritize security through its information security program, offering assurances such as FedRAMP Tailored LiSaaS ATO and Cloud Security Alliance CAIQ to ensure customer data remains secure on its platform.

The GitHub Internship Program, celebrating its fourth year in summer 2019, brought in students like Philip Dumaresq from Concordia University, who interned with the Learning Engineering team. During his internship, Philip developed the first iteration of a Learning Lab API to extend the use of GitHub's Learning Lab beyond the platform, allowing course authors to integrate courses into other websites and enhance their educational content. He explored API architecture and design, built components like an error handler and authentication page, and gained insights into application security and documentation. Philip learned valuable lessons about teamwork, stakeholder engagement, and the importance of understanding the problem deeply rather than focusing solely on solutions. This experience also highlighted the benefits of incremental development in streamlining the API creation process.

The GitHub Internship Program celebrated its fourth year by welcoming summer 2019 interns, who shared their experiences in a blog series. Parth Shah, a UC Berkeley student and computer science teacher, detailed his project of building a full stack development learning pathway for GitHub's Learning Lab during his internship. Motivated by his teaching experience, Parth aimed to create an end-to-end curriculum to address the gap in full stack development education, focusing on learners with basic coding knowledge. He developed two courses, one on React and the other on Express and PostgreSQL, culminating in a project to build a single-page gradebook web application. The internship allowed him to refine his skills in creating educational content and emphasized the role of education technology in making programming more accessible.

GitHub has implemented support for Web Authentication (WebAuthn), allowing users to utilize security keys for two-factor authentication across a broader range of browsers and devices, marking a significant step towards more secure and user-friendly authentication. This new standard replaces the previous U2F API and supports browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Brave on various operating systems including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with some options allowing devices themselves to serve as security keys. As WebAuthn continues to gain broader browser and device support, GitHub anticipates it could eventually enable biometric authentication as a primary security measure, moving away from traditional password reliance. The company is exploring ways to make authentication more accessible, including the potential use of WebAuthn as a single-factor method. GitHub encourages other web services to adopt WebAuthn by providing open-source libraries and tools, such as the @github/webauthn-json JavaScript wrapper, to facilitate its implementation.

The GitHub Student Developer Pack, offering over $45,000 in savings, is available to verified students and has grown to include over 21 new partners, providing essential tools and training for aspiring developers. This initiative, which has benefited over 1.5 million students since its inception, includes free access to GitHub Pro and exclusive offers from GitHub Education partners. The program aims to support students in building their portfolios, developing applications, and gaining real-world experience that enhances their employability. Notable partners include companies like Phrase, ConfigCat, and PushBots, which emphasize the value of practical tool usage in student development. The Pack encourages students to explore a variety of tools, with new partners continually joining the initiative, and provides guides and resources to maximize the benefits. Students aged 13 and above can join with proof of academic enrollment, while teachers can request educational materials and training resources.

GitHub Enterprise's latest server release enhances team collaboration and security with significant updates to project management tools, security features, and developer experiences. Key improvements include repository templates that allow admins to create new repositories with the same structure, issue transfer capabilities for seamless issue management across repositories, and assignable commenters for better task allocation. Enhanced project management is also supported by displaying milestones on project cards and filtering by milestones. Security features have been bolstered with expanded dependency graph support for yarn.lock files, enabling security alerts for vulnerabilities in dependencies used by JavaScript projects. Admins gain more transparency through expanded audit log capabilities, while users benefit from improved auto-watch settings and gist notifications. Additionally, organization admins can opt to show members' full names in comments within private repositories. These updates aim to improve productivity and security for teams using GitHub Enterprise.

GitHub has implemented a token scanning feature to enhance the security of its users by detecting and preventing the misuse of accidentally shared credentials in repositories. This initiative, introduced about a year ago, has resulted in collaboration with multiple service providers, including Atlassian, Dropbox, Discord, Proctorio, and Pulumi, to scan for their specific token formats, joining other major partners like AWS, Google Cloud, and Slack. The system operates by scanning nearly nine million daily commits for known token formats and notifying the relevant service provider within seconds if a match is found, allowing the provider to revoke the token and notify users before potential misuse. GitHub encourages more service providers to join this effort, which involves setting up an API endpoint and defining regular expressions to match their token formats, to proactively mitigate security breaches.

Git 2.23 introduces several significant updates and experimental features contributed by over 77 contributors, including the new git switch and git restore commands, which aim to simplify and clarify the functionality of the traditional git checkout command by separating branch switching and file restoring operations. The update also enhances git for-each-ref, making it faster and more efficient in handling multiple patterns while improving connectivity checks by utilizing references from alternates. Additionally, a new --quit option for git merge allows users to abort a merge without altering the working copy, while git cherry-pick now includes a --skip option to bypass conflicts during a sequence. The update further improves performance through commit graph chains for large repositories, supports Octave and Rust in git grep and git diff, and ensures consistency in email mapping across git shortlog and git log. A new tutorial offers guidance for contributors seeking to make their first upstream contribution, highlighting the collaborative nature of the Git project.

Alejandra Trejo Rodriguez, a GitHub intern and student at New York University Abu Dhabi, shares her experience working on a project aimed at enhancing accessibility for non-English speakers by localizing GitHub Learning Lab courses. Motivated by her own experiences as a native of Monterrey, Mexico, she chose to focus on reducing language barriers in STEM education. Her project involved translating popular Learning Lab courses, like "Introduction to GitHub," into Japanese and Spanish, with the help of GitHub's international community and Employee Resource Groups. Alejandra's work included user interviews and testing, which led to adjustments in course design and language preference settings to improve user experience. Her manager encouraged her to focus on the impact of her work rather than the quantity of code written, emphasizing the importance of coordination and communication in engineering. Her localization efforts will be highlighted at PyCon LatAm in Mexico, where they will assist in authoring courses for non-English speakers, contributing to the broader goal of strengthening global developer communities.

GitHub has expanded its commit signing feature to include bots by default, ensuring that both human and automated contributions can be verified as authentic. Commit signing uses cryptographic methods to confirm the integrity and authorship of a commit, with verified commits marked by a green checkmark on GitHub. This feature, which has supported human-authored commits for some time, is now crucial for integrating bots like Dependabot into workflows, enhancing the security of software supply chains. Commit signing was first introduced in Git version 1.7.9 in January 2012, with GitHub implementing support in April 2016, as part of their ongoing efforts to secure software development and collaboration.

GitHub Learning Lab offers an enhanced platform for developers to learn and teach software development through improved course creation tools and multilingual support. The newly redesigned course builder simplifies the process by allowing users to create, test, and edit courses without needing to write YAML, and includes features like video embedding from YouTube and Vimeo. The platform has open-sourced all courses created by the GitHub team, inviting contributions from the community to translate, improve, or customize content. Additionally, the Learning Lab bot's behaviors are now open source for further customization, and an API is available for integrating Learning Lab with external applications. These updates aim to foster a collaborative environment for educators, developers, and technology enthusiasts to connect and innovate within the field of education.

GitHub Enterprise Cloud now supports SSH certificates, providing organizations with enhanced control over repository access by allowing a certificate authority (CA) to sign SSH keys. This feature enables admins to upload the public key of their SSH CA and issue certificates for member authentication, ensuring that only authorized users can access enterprise repositories. Unlike traditional SSH keys, SSH certificates integrate metadata and expiration parameters, offering a higher level of security with features like daily certificate expiration, which requires developers to renew access regularly. This development caters to security-conscious teams by allowing them to enforce sophisticated access policies and maintain rigorous security protocols. As an eagerly anticipated feature, it expands GitHub Enterprise's security capabilities while future support for Enterprise Server is also in the pipeline.

Nearly 20,000 teachers utilize GitHub Classroom to distribute assignments, track student progress, and provide feedback, streamlining the process of managing coding tasks. However, balancing multiple tools can lead to increased administrative workload, prompting the introduction of a new integration with various learning management systems (LMS) to enhance efficiency. This feature allows teachers to sync student rosters from their LMS with GitHub Classroom, eliminating the need for manual data entry and enabling updates throughout the semester. Popular LMS platforms like Google Classroom, Canvas, Moodle, and Brightspace are supported, with specific configuration guides available, though Blackboard integration is still in progress. The open-source nature of GitHub Classroom encourages user involvement in its development, with opportunities to track progress, request features, or contribute directly to the repository.

GitHub announced its 2019 GitHub Universe Inclusivity Scholarship Program to promote diversity and ensure accessibility at the GitHub Universe event held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco from November 13-14. The program offers free tickets through partnerships with local nonprofits and meetup groups, as well as an Individual Inclusivity Scholarship Program, which covers only the cost of admission. Recipients are responsible for their travel and lodging expenses. Applications for the scholarship were open to individuals aged 18 or older until September 9, with notifications sent by September 16, requiring confirmation of attendance by September 20. The initiative reflects GitHub's commitment to creating a dynamic and inclusive event experience.

GitHub is committed to supporting a collaborative community by offering free and subsidized tickets to GitHub Universe 2019 for open source maintainers through the GitHub Maintainer Scholarship Program. This initiative, along with Inclusivity Scholarships, aims to enhance accessibility and inclusivity at GitHub events, reflecting the platform's gratitude toward the open source community that drives its success. Interested applicants must be 18 or older to apply by 12 pm PT on August 29, with selected recipients being notified by September 4 and required to confirm attendance by September 13.

GitHub Actions is a versatile API that streamlines the automation of workflows by allowing developers to orchestrate tasks based on any event while offering robust execution, feedback, and security features. It enables users to create, share, and modify workflows entirely as code within repositories, supporting a wide array of operating systems, languages, and frameworks, including Node.js, Python, Java, and more. The introduction of fast CI/CD capabilities allows for efficient project building, testing, and deployment across platforms like Linux, macOS, and Windows, with support for matrix builds to test multiple project versions in parallel. Real-time feedback through live logs enhances user experience, and the platform's integration with GitHub Package Registry simplifies package publishing and consumption. With a clean YAML syntax and a rich ecosystem of reusable actions, developers can automate various tasks, from triaging issues to managing releases. GitHub Actions is free for public repositories with a pay-as-you-go model for private ones, and it supports self-hosted runners for those who prefer to use their own infrastructure.

The js13kGames competition is an annual JavaScript coding event that encourages web and game developers to create a game in 13 kilobytes or less, based on a theme announced at the start of the month-long challenge. Organized by @end3r since 2012, the competition welcomes participants of all skill levels, offering an opportunity to enhance JavaScript and game development skills while promoting creativity and fun. This year's event begins on August 13, with the theme revealed at 13:00 CEST, and participants can track progress and share their experiences using the hashtag #js13k. Resources and tutorials are available to assist developers in maximizing the limited 13 kilobyte space for their creations. Last year’s theme, "offline," inspired nearly 300 open-source games, showcasing a variety of genres, including shoot ‘em ups, platformers, and space exploration simulations, all playable in browsers.

GitHub Universe is a major product and community conference taking place in San Francisco on November 13-14, featuring talks from open source maintainers and executives from companies like Shopify, Zapier, and Ford, along with announcements from GitHub leaders. Attendees can expect session tracks tailored for enterprises, developers, and integrators, offering opportunities to learn new skills, engage with industry experts, and gain insights into GitHub's future investments. Highlights include workshops for hands-on experience with new tools, networking opportunities with developers and experts, and sessions with speakers like IBM's Emma Dickson and Toast's Rea Loretta. Early bird pricing offers significant savings, and group discounts are available to encourage team participation.