4 New GitHub Products That Will Change How You Code

Just recently, GitHub ran its first-ever virtual GitHub Satellite event. Thousands of people tuned in for the day of live-streaming that featured a keynote, live-coded music, and more.

Photo by Caleb White on Unsplash.

At the start of the day, GitHub announced a few new features coming soon to the platform, including a live web-based development environment. These new features are sure to change the way we make open-source happen in the future.

Codespaces

Codespaces environment in a web browser — Photo from GitHub Blog.

Setting up a development environment is often difficult, but GitHub is testing out a solution. It’s created Codespaces, which brings a full environment based on VS Code to your web browser, including most VS features and even terminal access.

You’ll even be able to start a codespace and connect to it from your favorite desktop IDE, giving more customization along with the ability to add any VS Code extensions on the web.

At the time of writing this article, Codespaces is in a limited public beta and pricing is not yet final.

Discussions

Discussions tab on zeit/next.js — Photo from GitHub Blog.

Previously, open-source communities were only able to communicate on GitHub through issues and pull requests. Soon, GitHub will be releasing a new feature for organizing conversations and creating a community knowledge base.

Discussions will be in your project’s repository, so they’ll be where your community already is. Discussions are already available in a few open-source communities, including zeit/next.js and twbs/bootstrap.

Code Scanning and Secret Scanning

Code scanning demonstration — Photo from GitHub Blog.

GitHub has made code scanning a native experience. Now, every push to your repo will be scanned for vulnerabilities using GitHub Actions. It’s free for open-source and any public project can sign up for the limited public beta.

GitHub has also expanded its secret scanning to private repositories. This feature has been available for public repos since 2018 and will now be available for private code as well.

Private Instances

GitHub will soon be offering a new, fully managed option for its enterprise clients. Its plans for Private Instances bring enhanced security and new policy features to meet each customer’s needs for compliance and security.

This product is not yet in beta but may be soon.

Conclusion

Soon enough, GitHub will release these features to the public, making open-source software development more seamless, efficient, and safe. What will the company have in store for us next?

Note: The information in this article is from this GitHub Blog post as well as the virtual event hosted on May 6, 2020.

Thanks to Zack Shapiro.

WRITTEN BY

Ben Soyka