The GitHub Blog

Amsterdam Meetup: Success!

2009-07-03T06:36:21-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came out!

I asked those present to share an open source project of theirs. Here are a few:

simple_gate – A Ruby library for using net/ssh/gateway’s capabilities in a simple to use way.
surf – A simple CouchDB mapper written in Scala
ubuntu-machine – Capistrano recipes which allow you to setup a machine running Ubuntu Server 8.0.4 or 8.1.
active_record_like – Make your ActiveRecords come from XML, LDAP, Memcache or even C# libraries!
ico – A JavaScript graph library based on Raphael by Wakoopa.

GitHub Sticker Showcase

2009-07-02T16:05:27-07:00

Show us yours!

GitHub Meetup in Amsterdam

2009-07-01T10:24:04-07:00

I’m in Amsterdam for Kings of Code (which was awesome) and will be at Cafe de Jaren Thursday (the 2nd) at 8pm.

Stop by and have a drink if you’re in the neighborhood!

Not sure who to look for? Check the BusinessWeek photo (I’m on the right).

GitHub Rebase #24

2009-06-29T15:50:25-07:00

Welcome back to Rebase! Want your project featured? Check out the guidelines and remember: the more information on your README/project page the better!

Featured Project

blue-ridge is a no-hassle JavaScript testing framework. Built on the same principles as Rails such as Convention over Configuration, this combines the power of Rhino, Screw.Unit, Smoke, and env.js so you can test the core logic behind your JS without having to deal with a browser. This is built right into your Rails testing framework of choice, and it even has an interactive console so you can debug your code instead of using a tool like Firebug. By default it assumes you’re using jQuery, but Prototype can be swapped in with barely any effort. Check out this great blog post to see how to get started, and browse around a sample application to see it in action.

Notably New Projects

PNGSquash is for those who love OSX apps and smaller images. Save some bandwidth and some frustration by allowing this app to crush your PNGs for you. Pick from your favorite algorithm for shaving bytes off images such as PNGCrush or OptiPNG to literally squash those bits down. Download the app here if you’d like to try it out.

loli is a Haskell web development DSL inspired by Sinatra that can run on Hack (which is based on Rack). This is a neat way to express a web application that’s both classy and extremely functional. It’s already got some great view template support, including Rails-inspired partials and layouts.

v8-gl fuses the ubiquitious graphics engine, OpenGL, with the speed demon of a JavaScript interpreter, v8. The result is that you can code graphical apps in JS instead of C/C++. This project aims to be a full toolkit, but right now it’s just getting the bindings down so everything is possible in pure JS. The progress so far looks pretty stunning, and I’m sure this project could use your help if you’re of the graphical/gaming type.

bananajour is a wacky name for a slick interface to Git repositories served up over Bonjour). Think of this like gitjour, but with a really nice web application on top of it. Why is this useful? Well, if you happen to be attending certain gatherings without internet access, this is a great way to share your code. If you can’t connect to GitHub, this looks like your best option to get your Git on.

Palette is little Python project that uses the Python Imaging Library to create a color map of any picture. The most interesting visualization it can create is a ‘star’ color wheel, where the length of the ray is proportional to the hue. Here’s what it looks like for our dear friend the Octocat. This could be a neat little project to hack on if you’re new to Python and would like something a bit visual to hack on.

Push It

2009-06-26T14:37:49-07:00

Yesterday you pushed 17,160 times to GitHub for a total of 44,287 unique commits.

You also pushed an additional 9,577 non-unique commits.

Thanks.

Deploying ExpressionEngine from GitHub

2009-06-24T18:03:56-07:00

hivelogic has a great, in-depth tutorial on Deploying ExpressionEngine from GitHub with Capistrano.

Thanks Dan!

Grails Internals Handbook

2009-06-23T17:02:21-07:00

Inspired by the Merb Internals Handbook, the Grails community has begun working on a handbook of their own: The Grails Internals Handbook.

From the README:

If you want to contribute, fork this repository and go ahead. Pull requests on GitHub are more than welcome. If you use patches, make sure you use git format-patch and your patch has author name and email address on it.

We love to see this stuff – keep ‘em coming, and good luck!

NY State Senate Code on GitHub

2009-06-20T11:04:50-07:00

If you’re in New York, or are interested in Open Government initiatives, you may be excited to know that the New York State Senate has opened up to the online community in a big way. They have put up a Free and Open-Source Software & Services website that provides and documents an API for all of their legislative data, feeds and widgets for that data, a browser for that data that even uses Disqus to allow you to comment on legislation, and open source software projects that help consume that data.

The cool thing for us is that they’ve put all their open source projects up on GitHub at github.com/nysenatecio for you to use and improve.

As a user of Open-Source software the New York Senate wants to help give back to the community that has given it so much – including this website. To meet its needs the Senate is constantly developing new code and fixing existing bugs. Not only does the Senate recognize that it has a responsibility to give back to the Open Source community, but public developments, made with public money should be public.

We are very happy that we can help them share these projects, and I hope more local and federal government efforts will open up to this degree. Congratulations to the New York Senate for moving forward with openness and accountability.

Using GitHub Through Draconian Proxies

2009-06-19T09:18:21-07:00

Great blog post. Useful whether you’re on Unix or Windows.

Using GitHub Through Draconian Proxies

Thanks Jeff! (And sorry you’re stuck behind a proxy :)

Hosting Python on GitHub?

2009-06-16T18:16:38-07:00

If so, dinoboff has you covered! github-tools includes a “PasteScript template, Paver tasks and Sphinx extension to setup a new package and easily host it on GitHub (including its documentation)”.

Get it from pypi

easy_install github-tools

Or GitHub:

git clone git://github.com/dinoboff/github-tools.git
cd github-tools
python setup.py install

Thanks dinoboff!

GitHub Rebase #23

2009-06-15T17:32:47-07:00

It’s Rebase time once again!

Featured Project

clojure is a functional programming language based on Lisp that runs on the Java Virtual Machine. It recently hit a pretty huge milestone and is now freely available for you to fork right here on GitHub. There’s quite a few screencasts about using the language over at blip.tv along with plenty of documentation at their homepage. Want to see Clojure in action? Try out ring or compojure, both web frameworks, or incanter, a statistical computing and graphics environment. If you’re into functional programming and want to harness its power on the JVM, give this language a look.

Notably New Projects

hemlock is a new ActionScript based framework that combines the powers of Flash and XMPP through ejabberd to create some killer web applications. (I know, that pun was terrible.) There’s plenty of examples already on their site, and make sure to peruse their Learn page to see how this all comes together.

rip is a brand new packaging system for Ruby that provides a ridiculously useful alternative to those used to dealing with RubyGems. Armed with the ability to install packages from multiple sources, the sharing of virtual environments, dependency checking at install time instead of at runtime and more, this library is definitely going to change the game for those doing serious Ruby work. The project’s readme and homepage has plenty of information, and be sure to check out some of the various blog posts about it.

django-haystack is the latest and greatest search plugin for the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines. Hook it up to Solr, Whoosh or Xapian and get searching. With an API that claims to make any Djangonaut feel right at home, you’re sure to save some time looking through your site’s data if you check out this project first.

ginatra mixes together everyone’s favorite source code management system with Sinatra to produce one classy looking gitweb clone. Don’t take my word for it though, check it out for yourself. If you’re the type that likes to view your git history locally in your browser, set aside some time to get this working for your repositories and you won’t be let down.

tictactoe-scala is pretty self-explanatory, but could be a fun start for those willing to take a look at Scala for its incredible scaling power or even those who want to have a website that can handle over 5000 requests per minute. I tend to learn more by reading a game’s code than a queueing system or web server, and I’m hoping you will too.

Yahoo-Flavored Hadoop on GitHub

2009-06-10T15:41:23-07:00

Yahoo’s openness continues today with their announcement of their Hadoop distribution being hosted right here on GitHub: http://github.com/yahoo/hadoop.

Read all about it on Yahoo’s Developer Blog.

GitHub:FI Pricing now Public

2009-06-10T12:10:28-07:00

This past week since our initial offering of our Firewall Install product has been an exciting one. We received over 300 quote requests on launch day, with more filling our inbox since. We really weren’t prepared for the level of response we received and fell way behind trying to provide quotes for everyone.

That, coupled with the fact that we wanted companies to sign an NDA before receiving their quote, slowed the entire process down. It also bewildered more than a few people wondering why lawyers needed to be involved just to figure out how much the product cost.

For these things, we apologize. Today, we solve these issues by posting our GitHub:FI pricing options: http://fi.github.com/pricing.html

If you have already submitted for a quote, you should have received an email this morning pointing you to the new pricing page. If you already received a quote, please disregard it, the pricing on the website is final.

Announcing GitHub:FI

2009-06-01T13:06:31-07:00

We’re excited to announce the launch of Logical Awesome’s latest product: GitHub:Firewall Install

What Is it?

GitHub:FI is a version of GitHub that can be installed within your own private network. This product is ideal for your company if you wish to enjoy the benefits of GitHub, but are unable to do so because of corporate restrictions or laws that prevent you from hosting your code with a third-party service.

How Does It Work?

We’ve partnered with BitRock, the packaging and deployment specialists, to create a comprehensive installer and to deliver seamless product updates. Together, we’ve managed to make the installation process as painless as possible: download the installer, answer a few questions, and your internal GitHub stack is running in about 10 minutes. It’s really that simple!

We currently only support Linux-based operating systems, but we may add additional support based upon demand.

How Did We Build It?

The FI stack is remarkably similar to the one in use at GitHub.com. The primary difference is that the FI source code is compiled and run with JRuby inside of a Jetty container instead of our normal Ruby/Mongrel stack. Beyond that, FI looks and acts just like the site you’ve come to know and love. You’ll still benefit from the same robust, scalable architecture that powers GitHub.com, which means you never have to worry about how many users your FI install can handle (we handle nearly 100,000).

How Much Does It Cost?

GitHub:FI pricing is quoted individually per installation based on your company’s needs and support requirements. Please keep in mind that FI is priced competitively with other internal code management solutions and is well over the cost of our most-expensive hosted plan.

What About Support?

We provide two levels of support: Standard and Premium. Standard support is included free-of-charge for the first year of service, providing Help Desk support, Email support, and Knowledge Base access. Premium support comes at an additional cost and provides your company the ability to get in touch with our technical staff over the phone. If you encounter a problem that is inherent in the product, we’ll do everything in our power to respond immediately, regardless of support plan. Other issues are prioritized and addressed accordingly.

I Want to Get a Quote!

Head to http://fi.github.com for additional information, a screencast detailing the installation and features of GitHub:FI, and to request a quote for your company!

GitHub Rebase #22

2009-05-31T16:02:54-07:00

This week it’s Rebase Book Edition! There’s plenty of documentation projects going on at GitHub, and it’s about time they got some attention. Clone yourself a copy, head outside with your laptop, and enjoy a good programming book under the sun.

Vim Recipes is a work-in-progress cookbook for all things Vim. Learn how to use this awesome editor, extend and customize it to your will, and more. There’s a HTML and PDF version available for your consumption.

Sinatra Book aims to be a tutorial and recipes that teaches one to use Sinatra, the classy Ruby web framework. So far, it contains plenty of information about how to get started and some instructions on deployment. Pick up the book here.

Programming Pearls is a rewrite of the book from Bell Labs that’s in Ruby instead of C. This has some great examples of algorithms that are both efficient and elegant and is definitely worth a read.

Git Community Book is one of the best resources online to learn about Git. If you’re just making your first commits then this is a great way to quickly become a Git guru. Even if you’ve been deep within interactive rebases and octopus merges you’re bound to find something new by persuing this great site.

The Ruport Book goes into detail on how to use Ruport in nearly every manner concievable to make your life easier when generating reports. Check out the outline here.

The Book of Recess aims to help readers enjoy PHP development while using the Recess framework. The book explains the structure, architecture, and how to contribute back your own changes to the framework.

Journey to Ramaze covers everything a web developer needs to know to get up and running with Ramaze. If you’re not a fan of the current Ruby web frameworks, this may be worth a read.

Common Java Cookbook is a tome that contains instructions for using open source Java frameworks like Lucene and Velocity to get things done. It also covers basic algorithms and tasks that nearly every Java programmer will need to do at some point. Brush up here.

The Merb Open Source Book is the leading guide on one of the leanest web frameworks out there, Merb. It’s also been translated into quite a few languages. Read up here.

Huge thanks to runpaint for pointing out most of these awesome projects.