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Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

kevin.is

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Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#91

Post by kranzky »

Things I would build:

* Push conflicted branches so developers in a distributed team can work together to resolve conflicts.

* A git-powered version of Rake, which runs only those tests that need to be run based on the git history since the last run.

* A tool to identify what code changes caused a particular test to fail, based on the above.

* Language syntax detection for smarter diffs, improving the display when blocks of code are moved around or indented/outdented.

* Language linters built in, to detect when a change is introducing a syntax error. Same for coding style.

I'd also move the "Close Pull Request" button a little farther away from the "Comment" button, and make it possible to add comments to a diff when you've hidden whitespace differences (with `&w=1`... I'd also make it a bit more obvious that you could do that).

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#92

Post by dvanduzer »

scrollaway wrote: post #82
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What appeals to you about mailing lists? If it's reporting issues, discussion solutions, and reviewing patches, there are Issues and Pull Requests. If it's for general discussions about the "future of the project" or bigger-picture topics, I'd use Discourse. It's a really nice way to organize discussions that are one step removed from code-related issues. If it's for things where you need quick or real time feedback,…

> If it's for general discussions about the "future of the project" or bigger-picture topics, I'd use Discourse. It's a really nice way to organize discussions that are one step removed from code-related issues. This is what is appealing and Github offering a builtin-to-github solution for it, with linking to Github accounts, autoformatting etc (like in issues) and so on. There is so much potential.

Why can't you just have those discussions in issues? Create a "future of the project" label.

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#93

Post by hlfcoding »

An unordered list of missing features from me:

- No ability to store the tab size setting. While appending '?ts=2' to the url is ok, it's not convenient and usable on a daily basis. The same for omitting whitespace changes in a diff / pr ('?ws=1').

- No ability to step through history on a single file while in blob view, or blame view. In blame view, the commit link goes to the commit, not the blame of the file at that commit.

- Agree with OP that notifications need to be grouped / summarized better. Perhaps expandable summary items per repo per type. This is mostly useful for private, work-related repos. Pulse and notifications are basically the same thing.

- Stars cannot be tagged. This makes managing hundreds of stars difficult. There's apps like Astral, but even those are lacking.

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#94

Post by adamnemecek »

I would make the search results deduplicated. It happens to me a lot that I search for something and the first 10 pages of search results are from the same 5 projects, but from different locations within the single projects. I usually lose patience sometime around page 5.

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#95

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

panic wrote: post #30
felixgallo wrote: post #17

These are great, but they're bugfixes. You'd finish them in the first few months. Then what are you going to do? Stare at an aquarium all day? Here's what I would build if I worked at github: * Github CI - simple CI for every language, integrating with: * Github Artifacts - repository for versioned deployable build packages (binaries, tar.gz files, ios builds, android builds...), integrating with: * Github Deploy - d…

You'd finish them in the first few months. I bet you could work on small polish issues like this for a lifetime and never finish. There's always something to improve.

i bet employers love listening to your bullshit excuses

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#96

Post by omni »

bqe wrote: post #41
kzhahou wrote: post #23

They'll need another $100 million to get these done! (Yes, by which I am saying their website has not improved much given their massive funding)

It's actually very surprising how little visible improvement GitHub has had in the past few years. What are they working on?

Projects like Atom which have basically nothing to do with their core service?

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#97

Post by pimlottc »

davidcelis wrote: post #54
kelukelugames wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is CI and why do people want it? I looked up the acronym on wikipedia but couldn't figure it out.

Continuous Integration. A good example of that service would be something like http://travis-ci.org or https://jenkins-ci.org . Basically it's a service that runs some predefined task (usually your test suites) at important points: when something is pushed to or merged into master, when a Pull Request is opened, etc...

It also, um, builds your code. Some of us still use compiled languages :P

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#98

Post by nickbauman »

anton_gogolev wrote: post #36
nickbauman wrote: post #2

Absolutely fix the pull request interface. It currently reads like a ransom note. Go over to bitbucket.org and copy theirs. It's 100x better.

What don't you like in current PRs?

Generally the UI is just poorly designed and unfocused. One specific thing: You can't mark them as approved in any way and doing something like +1 in a comment somewhere doesn't count.

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#99

Post by scrollaway »

dvanduzer wrote: post #92
scrollaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's for general discussions about the "future of the project" or bigger-picture topics, I'd use Discourse. It's a really nice way to organize discussions that are one step removed from code-related issues. This is what is appealing and Github offering a builtin-to-github solution for it, with linking to Github accounts, autoformatting etc (like in issues) and so on. There is so much potential.

Why can't you just have those discussions in issues? Create a "future of the project" label.

Because then users can't simply send an email to create a new topic to talk about...

Re: Things I would build if I worked at GitHub

#100

Post by arikrak »

I feel one could have more ambitious goals. E.g. Could Github build a powerful developers careers site based on all the data they have? Could they provide more tools to help people program? (Could they automatically create programs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973088)
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