Universe 2020: GitHub simplifies open-source investing, adds dark mode, and more

GitHub is announcing a new way for businesses to invest in open-source alongside other features on day one of its virtual Universe conference.

Businesses will now be able to show their support and appreciation for their favourite open-source projects via ‘GitHub Sponsors for Companies’.

The new feature enables companies to invest in open-source projects using their existing GitHub billing arrangements. Several high-profile businesses – including Amazon Web...

8 December 2020 | Git

State of the Octoverse 2020: Devs increase productivity despite pandemic

GitHub’s latest State of the Octoverse has been released, offering developer insights for a year which has been unlike any other.

Fortunately, software development is one industry which could adapt quickly to the unique circumstances brought about by the pandemic. Many developers already work remotely so, for some, minimal-to-no changes were required to their working habits during lockdowns.

56 million developers used GitHub in 2020—making over 1.9 billion...

2 December 2020 | Git

GitHub CLI 1.0 enables a full repo workflow from the terminal

GitHub CLI, a tool for bringing full repo functionality to your terminal, has reached its first stable version after a very successful beta.

“Developers spend a lot of time in their terminals, and our CLI helps to mitigate the frequent context switching between your terminal and GitHub.com,” says Amanda Pinsker, Product Designer at GitHub.

“Command-line tools enable developers to script nearly any action and automate their workflows, which in turn allows developers...

17 September 2020 | Git

GitHub preserves open source code in the Arctic (just in case…)

GitHub has completed its mission to preserve all of the repository’s open source code in the Arctic.

The code-hosting platform first announced the initiative last year as part of its Archive Program. The whole coronavirus thing set GitHub’s plans back a bit, but the company has now confirmed that the code was successfully deposited on July 8th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzI9FNjXQ0o

A snapshot of all active public repositories was taken on February 2nd,...

20 July 2020 | Git

Amazon’s AI-powered code reviewer CodeGuru is now available

An artificial intelligence-powered code reviewer from Amazon Web Services (AWS) called CodeGuru has reached general availability.

CodeGuru is a set of tools which use machine learning for reviewing code and suggesting potential optimisations to improve performance.

The set consists of two components, Reviewer and Profiler, and first launched into preview last December.

AWS trained Reviewer using code from over 10,000 open source projects in addition to the...

30 June 2020 | Artificial Intelligence

GitHub will replace terms associated with slavery like ‘master’ and ‘whitelist’

GitHub has said it will remove terms associated with slavery like “master” and “whitelist” from its platform.

The world’s largest repository host has said it will drop terms like “master” and “slave” for more neutral terminology like “main/primary/default” and “secondary”.

Other terminology which will be replaced includes “whitelist” and “blacklist” in favour of the more general “allow list” and “deny/exclude list,”...

15 June 2020 | Git

GitHub warns Java developers about malware infecting NetBeans projects

GitHub has issued a warning to Java developers about malware which is specifically infecting NetBeans projects.

The security team for the world’s largest repository host has dubbed the malware Octopus Scanner and found “26 open source projects that were backdoored by this malware and that were actively serving backdoored code.”

GitHub notes the malware is designed to backdoor projects created using the Apache NetBeans IDE – a phenomenon they had not seen before...

1 June 2020 | Development Tools

GitHub makes its core tools free for all development teams

GitHub has given developers a welcome helping hand during these difficult times by making its core tools free.

Organisations can now make private repositories without paying any fees. Previously, even small teams would’ve had to pay for a premium membership starting from $7/month.

Last year, GitHub made private repositories available for free users but with restrictions in areas such as the number of collaborators; which hindered teams. Unlimited collaborators and...

15 April 2020 | Development Tools

GitHub announces native Android and iOS apps alongside new features

GitHub has announced native mobile apps for Android and iOS alongside several new features during its annual Universe conference.

The world’s largest repo host first launched an Android app back in 2012 before yanking it from the Play Store in 2015. GitHub’s new app is coming to iOS first this time with a beta already available. An Android version will be launched at a later date.

It’s really quite amazing to consider how long it’s taken one of the most...

14 November 2019 | Android

Octoverse 2019: Python slithers past Java to become GitHub’s second most popular language

GitHub has published its latest State of the Octoverse report which provides fascinating insights into the development industry.

As the world’s largest repository host, GitHub is in a fairly unique position to monitor trends among the developer community. The company’s new report has once again highlighted some important changes.

Top languages

Perhaps unsurprisingly, JavaScript retains the crown as the most-used programming language on GitHub over the past...

8 November 2019 | Git