February 2020 Summaries

GitHub.com recently experienced multiple service interruptions, highlighting the challenges associated with scaling its database infrastructure, particularly due to increased load on its largest database cluster. While these incidents were distinct, they shared a common theme of exposing new scalability challenges. GitHub acknowledges the importance of service reliability for users and apologizes for the disruptions. To address these issues, GitHub is working on several data partitioning initiatives aimed at improving backend system scalability and performance, with some of these measures set to be implemented soon. Users are encouraged to monitor GitHub's status page for updates on system availability, as a more detailed technical report will be released in the coming weeks.

GitHub is hosting its first online GitHub Actions Hackathon, inviting participants of all skill levels to create innovative GitHub Actions from March 5 to March 31. Participants are encouraged to develop Actions that solve problems, build containers, and deploy to any cloud, with the first thousand submissions receiving free GitHub merchandise. GitHub Actions facilitates automation of software workflows, allowing users to build, test, and deploy code directly from GitHub while customizing code reviews, branch management, and issue triaging. The event aims to inspire creativity with examples like Waka-box for tracking coding stats, AWS ECR for managing Docker images, and Image Actions for image compression. Enthusiasts can find more details in the FAQ and official rules, and are encouraged to subscribe for updates as they prepare to showcase their creations.

The GitHub Student Developer Pack, launched six years ago, has provided over 1.8 million students with access to essential real-world developer tools and training for free, aided by partnerships with over a hundred companies. In February, 14 new offers were added, giving students access to tools beneficial for creating games, desktop applications, and mobile apps. These tools, provided by companies like Unity Technologies, Xojo, and Raygun, aim to equip students with the technical skills needed for a technology-driven workplace. The pack offers exposure to various tech stacks and tools that employers value, enhancing students' employability. The Pack is available for free to verified students aged 13 and older worldwide, with new partners continually joining to expand the resources offered.

GitHub has introduced a new web notifications experience, now set as the default on GitHub.com, after extensive testing and iteration. This updated interface aims to enhance user productivity by allowing users to quickly access and manage notifications through custom filter workflows and keyboard shortcuts, whether at their desks or on the go. The new system is designed to reduce notification-related stress and improve responsiveness by enabling users to efficiently assist teammates or manage pull requests. GitHub encourages users to provide feedback to further refine the notifications experience.

GitHub's 2019 Transparency Report highlights the company's commitment to transparency and free expression, detailing how it handles requests to disclose user information and remove content. The report reveals that GitHub processed 261 requests for user data, mostly from law enforcement, resulting in information disclosure 189 times, often under gag orders. The report also covers cross-border data requests, government takedown requests affecting 54 projects, and 1,762 DMCA takedown notices, leading to the removal of 14,366 projects. Despite many companies phasing out transparency reporting, GitHub remains dedicated to maintaining transparency, restricting content removal narrowly, and engaging users in policy development. The report underscores GitHub’s role in broader discussions on platform governance while maintaining open communication about its practices.

GitHub has partnered with HackYourFuture, a non-profit coding school for refugees in Amsterdam, to promote social impact through coding education. The partnership emphasizes the transformative power of coding, as demonstrated by the "Behind the Source" campaign, which highlights the success stories of seven HackYourFuture graduates who have become web developers and contributed to major companies like eBay and Accenture. These graduates' portraits are hidden within the source code of various websites, celebrating their journey from refugees to tech professionals. HackYourFuture offers a seven-month web development course that has significantly improved job prospects for over 120 people in the Netherlands and more than 200 globally, boasting an over 85% success rate in securing high-quality developer positions. The initiative not only enhances employment opportunities for its participants but also addresses the industry demand for skilled developers while fostering community integration.

GitHub engineers have faced significant challenges with database schema migrations due to the fast-paced development and frequent changes required for new features, which often involve complex alterations to MySQL databases. Initially, schema changes at GitHub were managed manually, consuming considerable time from the database infrastructure team. To streamline this, they developed tools and processes such as GitHub Actions and skeema to automate schema management, allowing schema design to be treated as code and integrated into the GitHub flow. GitHub's approach emphasizes the use of pull requests for schema changes, leveraging skeema for generating SQL transitions and skeefree for orchestrating migrations across production environments. This system allows developers to maintain control over changes while ensuring that database infrastructure teams can efficiently manage and prioritize schema migrations. Despite GitHub's unique internal setup, they have open-sourced some of their tools, though these require adaptation to be used in different environments.

GitHub Enterprise is now part of the Microsoft for Startups program, which offers a range of free services, software, and benefits to startups, including $1,000 of monthly credit for GitHub Enterprise Cloud for up to two years. This inclusion provides startups with robust features like support, access provisioning, and extensive capacity for CI/CD and automation workflows, all with a 99.95% uptime SLA. Besides GitHub Enterprise, participants receive Azure credits, Visual Studio Enterprise, and Office 365, along with sales and marketing support such as Microsoft seller-sourced leads and co-selling opportunities. Since its inception, the Microsoft for Startups program has assisted thousands of startups from over 140 countries, and it encourages new applicants to take advantage of these offerings at no cost.

GitHub has announced the establishment of GitHub India Private Limited, a new subsidiary aimed at supporting the rapidly growing community of developers and enterprises in India, which is home to the third-largest number of active developers on the platform. This expansion, led by General Manager Maneesh Sharma, involves building a comprehensive team across various functions to help Indian developers and enterprises adopt DevOps best practices and collaborate on global projects. The initiative also focuses on supporting open source development and empowering student developers through programs like the GitHub Hackathon Grant, which provides financial support for student hackathons. In addition to fostering the open source community, GitHub is partnering with local companies using GitHub Enterprise to enhance their software development operations and digital transformation efforts, while expanding its channel partner program to better serve enterprise customers.

GitHub has launched the GitHub CLI in beta, providing a streamlined way for developers to interact with GitHub via the command line on macOS, Windows, and Linux, although it is currently not available for GitHub Enterprise Server. The CLI focuses on simplifying daily tasks such as handling issues and pull requests, allowing users to filter issues, view detailed bug descriptions, and create pull requests, which automatically handle forks and branch pushes. It also offers features like checking the status of pull requests and easily switching between branches to address requested changes, fostering a more efficient workflow. GitHub encourages feedback from users to enhance the CLI and aims to create an improved command-line experience for contributing to open-source projects, inviting suggestions through their open-source repository and feedback forms.

GitHub Enterprise Server 2.20 introduces enhanced security features, performance improvements, and bug fixes, along with expanded branch protection rules that give repository administrators more control over commit histories and branch management. The update allows enterprise users to access personal audit logs and brings internal visibility to repositories, aligning GitHub Enterprise Server with GitHub Enterprise Cloud in terms of repository accessibility. A migration script is offered to convert public repositories to internal ones, a change that will become mandatory in future releases as GitHub aims to standardize repository visibility definitions across its platform. Additionally, the update removes support for new SSH-DSS keys and basic password-based HTTP authentication, encouraging the use of personal access tokens and deprecating the legacy Gravatar service. To manage repository size, administrators can now set limits on commit sizes, and organization owners can establish default label sets for new repositories. A free trial of GitHub Enterprise is available for those interested in exploring these new features.

GitHub, as the world's largest open-source community, emphasizes the importance and growth of open-source projects, highlighting their role in underpinning everyday technologies like Mozilla Firefox and Linux. Open-source contributions offer developers, especially students, valuable opportunities to gain experience, collaborate with a diverse group of developers, and become part of supportive international communities. Contributions can go beyond coding, including tasks like enhancing documentation, creating logos, and improving usability. GitHub encourages participation through initiatives like #OpenSourceValentine, where verified students and faculty can share their first open-source contributions for a chance to win prizes, underscoring their commitment to fostering an open and collaborative tech world.

GitHub Actions API has become generally available, providing a platform to automate software workflows, and is now enhanced with new features based on community feedback. The API beta, accessible to all repositories, focuses on key areas like reading workflow run and job data, managing repository secrets, downloading artifacts, and registering self-hosted runners. Detailed information on workflow runs, such as outcomes and timing, can be queried, aiding integration with other tools, and raw logs can be downloaded for archival purposes. The secrets API facilitates automated management of repository secrets, emphasizing security with encryption requirements. Artifacts generated from continuous integration workflows can be archived and downloaded, promoting integration with other services. For self-hosted runners, the API enables automation of their registration and removal, simplifying their setup. Additionally, the API introduces new data for runner context and environment variables, such as run_id and run_number, and updates the GITHUB_TOKEN to streamline authentication. Users are encouraged to share their experiences with the new API functionalities on social platforms.

In an effort to streamline software development workflows, new features have been introduced to enhance communication and tracking on platforms like GitHub. These updates include new visuals and functionalities across project boards, issues, and pull requests, making it easier for teams to connect ideas to the code changes that realize them. A key feature is the ability to link pull requests directly from issues, enabling anyone viewing the issue to immediately see the status of development and the state of associated pull requests. This integration also allows reviewers to connect issues directly from pull requests and ensures that issues are automatically closed when linked pull requests are successfully merged. Additionally, new visuals in the issue list and project board display pull request information and status, providing context without requiring users to navigate away from their current view. These enhancements aim to make planning and tracking workflows smoother for development teams, with feedback encouraged to further refine these features.

Local Hack Day: Share (LHD: Share), organized by GitHub and Major League Hacking (MLH), is a global 12-hour hackathon event designed to help students from around the world complete their projects, enhance their portfolios, and refine their resumes. Starting on April 3, 2020, this event encourages students to host local hackathons, fostering a supportive environment for learning and experimenting with new technologies. Participants get the opportunity to showcase their projects, improve communication skills through various workshops, and access the GitHub Student Developer Pack, which provides free resources worth over $200,000. MLH offers guidance for organizing these events, including best practices for logistics and fundraising, and encourages participants to share their experiences on social media using the hashtag #LocalHackDay.

In 2019, GitHub launched the GitHub Archive Program and the GitHub Arctic Code Vault to preserve open-source software for future generations, aiming to store this code in an archive designed to last a thousand years. The Arctic Code Vault has now entered production, having captured a snapshot on February 2, 2020, of all active public repositories that met specific criteria, such as recent commits and star counts. Alongside the vault, GitHub created a guide to provide context, detailing software's nature, open source principles, and technical instructions for unpacking the archive, which is open to community contributions for improvement. An advisory board comprising experts in various fields was formed to enhance the archive's value, focusing on visualization, metadata, and redundancy, with plans to distribute fractional deposits globally to major archives. The official deposit of the Arctic Code Vault in the Arctic World Archive is scheduled for spring, with further discussions about the project's significance planned at an event in May 2020.