GitHub Actions and other announcements from GitHub Universe

GitHub, the soon to be acquired by Microsoft company, has always been known for its source code repository capabilities for developers. But why just store the code on a platform when you can run it too? 

At its annual developer conference, GitHub Universe, they announced Actions, which is essentially a way to help automate your development workflows. Actions use code packaged in a Docker container running on GitHub’s servers. Users can set up triggers for events, such as introducing new code to a testing channel, that set off Actions to take further steps involving that code defined by criteria set by administrators. Plus they say it will work in any programming language.

Kyle Daigle, director of ecosystem engineering at Github had this to say, "This is the most significant thing we’ve done since creating the pull request.".

On Twitter, developers were quick to weigh in about Actions

"I feel like, if anything was going to make us believe that Microsoft had good intentions with purchasing Github, it would be implementing a proper CI/devops system directly into the core product." - Derek Kuhnert

"Wouldn't that remove there benefit of having there enterprise suite of apps(Team Foundation Services, etc).. to me this seems like a step in the right direction.. I'd love to see a built in CI system, but Jenkins can do that job pretty smoothly once set up.. and potentially this is there step into creating a DevOps system built into the work flow of actions? just my thoughts" - Hamish Buckmaster

"Reminds me of Dialogflow + Google Functions but for pure CI entertainment." - Joe Hobot

"It seems like a Zapier way of doing DevOps on Github. But I'm happy with all new features they can add so as to not having a need to use any other of its competitors." - Juan F Gonzalez

A rundown of everything announced at GitHub Universe

GitHub + Platform:

• GitHub Actions (limited public beta): GitHub Actions allows you to build, connect, execute, and share code containers to run your software development workflow. Easily build, package, release, update, monitor, and deploy your project, in any language - on GitHub or any external system - without having to run code yourself. GitHub Actions is your workflow: built by you, run by us.
   

GitHub + Security:

• Java and .NET Support for security vulnerability alerts (GA): organization owners and repo admins will receive a notification when a known vulnerability enters a codebase, and are now available for Java and .NET. In the past year, we’ve also launched support for JavaScript, Ruby, and Python.
   
• GitHub Token Scanning (Public Beta): GitHub will now scan public repositories for known token formats and will alert the provider to validate and contact the account owner.
   
• GitHub Security Advisory API (GA): provides security advisories as a public service and a building block toward a powerful security platform.
   

GitHub + Business:

• GitHub Connect (GA): a set of features that unify the developer experience across different GitHub organizations and deployment types.
   
• Unified Contributions (GA): developers can now connect their GitHub Enterprise account with their GitHub.com account to show Enterprise contributions on their public profiles.
   
• Unified Search (GA): developers can now search private repositories within their company’s Business Cloud instances.
   
• Unified Business Identity (limited public beta): administrators can unify the management of multiple Business Cloud accounts so they can improve overall billing, licensing, permissions, and policies across these accounts.
   

GitHub + Developers:

• GItHub Learning Lab courses: today, GitHub us announcing three new courses covering secure development workflows with GitHub, reviewing a pull request, and getting started with GitHub Apps.
   
• GitHub Learning Lab for organizations (GA): now, organizations can create private courses and learning paths, customize course content, and access administrative reports and metrics.
   
• Suggested Changes (public beta): now, collaborators can suggest, edit, and accept changes inline with a single click.
   

 
Additionally, GitHub released their 2018 Octoverse report, which provides insight into the global growth of the open source community.

A few highlights:

• GitHub has grown to 31M+ developers hosting a total of 96M+ repositories
   
• Over 1.1M+ students have learned to code with GitHub
   
• 2.1M+ organizations using GitHub across public and private repositories, that’s 44% more than last year