Overview
What is GitHub?
GitHub is a platform that hosts public and private code and provides software development and collaboration tools. Features include version control, issue tracking, code review, team management, syntax highlighting, etc. Personal plans ($0-50), Organizational plans ($0-200), and Enterprise plans are…
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GitHub is probably the best - in code - collaboration tool out there.
Using GitHub allows developers to make fast and accurate code …
GitHub best code review software ever
Leveraging GitHub as a foundational building block for your technology teams.
The industry standard software versioning tool. Seriously, if you develop code, you need GitHub.
Manage Everything in One Place with GitHub
GitHub - A must have tool for developers
Thanks to GitHub that lets us manage source code without hassle
Gateway to the open-source community
Developers love it
The best code hosting and collaboration tool
GitHub Review
Great code hosting and collaboration tool
GitHub is good VCS.
GitHub: a product so perfect it's become synonymous with Git
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Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Team
$40
Enterprise
$210
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $4 per month per user
Product Demos
How to use the new Jira and GitHub integration - Demo Den December 2021
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is GitHub?
GitHub Video
GitHub Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
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Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(1028)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
GitHub is a versatile and widely-used platform that offers a range of use cases for developers, researchers, and organizations. Users collaborate in real time through GitHub's best-in-class tooling and simple interface, which is why it is commonly used for personal projects, university assignments, and managing code in team settings. The platform serves as the main integration point with other software, including continuous integration and continuous deployment services, allowing for seamless workflow automation.
GitHub's key use cases include code versioning and management, enabling developers to efficiently track code changes and revert back to earlier points in time. It also helps manage different versions of products for efficient development and deployment. With GitHub's collaboration features, developers can easily work together on code development, push code for others to pull, and collaborate with external contributors. Additionally, GitHub serves as a code hosting platform, allowing developers to easily share code and launch different application versions. It has become the go-to platform for hosting code repositories and establishing portfolios of work for developers in various industries.
Furthermore, GitHub plays a vital role in software research and development departments by providing a secure cloud-based Git repository system. It addresses concerns about longevity, security, and code management for technical project managers. The platform's integration with other tools like Slack, Jenkins, and custom webhooks enhances its functionality as a central repository for code storage, knowledge sharing, interactions tracking, and auditing. GitHub also offers built-in issue tracking capabilities and wiki pages for effective project management.
Moreover, GitHub's ease of use and graphical interface simplify the utilization of Git across platforms within organizations. Technical recruiters rely on GitHub to identify skilled developers while students leverage it for academic projects and assignments. Additionally, researchers utilize GitHub to store repositories from previous research projects and facilitate efficient team code development.
Overall, GitHub is highly regarded by users for its ability to solve challenges related to version control, collaboration on code development across teams or remote locations, issue tracking, project management, and code review. It serves as a central repository for code and provides features like CI/CD automation, documentation management, and easy integration with third-party tools.
Intuitive User Interface: Many users have found GitHub's user interface intuitive and easy to navigate, making it simple for them to explore repositories without the need to clone them. They appreciate how it simplifies the process of navigating through repositories, providing a user-friendly experience.
Fast Data Processing: Several reviewers have appreciated GitHub's speed in updating, packaging, and compressing data. This fast data processing allows for quick merges and highlights code changes efficiently, enabling developers to work with agility.
Robust Version Control: Users highly value GitHub's version control functionality as it provides a historical timeline of code improvements and the ability to revert back to older versions. This feature has been praised by many for its reliability and usefulness in maintaining code integrity throughout development projects.
Challenging to administer team members: Some users have found it challenging to effectively manage team members and collaborators across multiple repositories on GitHub. This becomes particularly difficult when there are varying access rights and roles, requiring extra effort and attention.
Confusing differentiation between user and organization accounts: Users often encounter confusion when trying to differentiate between user and organization accounts on GitHub. This lack of clarity can result in wasted time as they struggle to locate relevant settings or features within the platform.
Slow loading times: Atom, the text editor used in GitHub, has been criticized by users for its slow loading times. This delay can lead to frustration among users who expect a more seamless experience while navigating through their projects.
Users have made several recommendations about GitHub based on their experiences. Here are the three most common recommendations:
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Start with official documentation and use Git and GitHub via the command line. Users suggest that newcomers to GitHub should begin by referring to the official documentation. They also recommend utilizing Git and GitHub through the command line interface for a seamless experience.
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Explore integrations with Visual Studio Code and ClickUp. Many users recommend integrating GitHub with Visual Studio Code and ClickUp, as it enhances their workflows. This integration allows for smoother collaboration and improved project management.
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Improve user-friendliness and accessibility for new users. Some users believe that GitHub could be more user-friendly, especially for those who are new to the platform. They suggest making it more accessible by simplifying the interface or providing more comprehensive guidelines.
It is important to note that these recommendations reflect the opinions and experiences of users and do not represent a consensus among all users.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-20 of 20)Manage Everything in One Place with GitHub
- GitHub Action for your automation, build, test and deployment any platform and any languages
- GitHub help store our artifacts and dependency with in Github using GitHub packages
- You can integrate with the other third party applications like Jira, Azure DevOps etc..
- GitHub helps to integrate Development IDE like Visual studio, Eclipse, and jet brain ides etc..
- issues and projects they have to improve little more functionality like conditions for the particular issues or labels
- issues create, update, delete options for respective teams or user
- in developer workflow mandatory for issues or work-item functionality
Developers love it
- As a repository it's great. It houses almost all the open-source applications/code that anyone can fork and play with. A huge collection of sample codes available with problem statements across different domains make Github a one-stop location.
- I use GitHub with Windows and the Git Bash is superb. It [is] a powerful alternative to the Command Prompt and Powershell. Allows me to run shell scripts and UNIX commands inside the terminal [on] a Windows PC.
- GitHub integration with almost all cloud development/deployment platforms is amazing. Deploying a new application in Azure is really smooth. Just link the GitHub repositories and it's good to go. From automatic build to deployment everything is just amazing.
- Not an easy tool for beginners. Prior command-line experience is expected to get started with GitHub efficiently.
- Unlike other source control platforms GitHub is a little confusing. With no proper GUI tool its hard to understand the source code version/history.
- Working with larger files can be tricky. For file sizes above 100MB, GitHub expects the developer to use different commands (lfs).
- While using the web version of GitHub, it has some restrictions on the number of files that can be uploaded at once. Recommended action is to use the command-line utility to add and push files into the repository.
- When we want to setup an automated deployment pipeline.
- When we need a repository while working on open source projects supported by a huge community.
- If you want to deploy the programs in cloud platforms. Tested on platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP, Heruko.
- When the need is just for version control. GitHub is more than that.
The best code hosting and collaboration tool
- GitHub has a powerful UI for creating pull requests
- It makes it easy to research and find what code changed and when.
- It is reliable and dependable. I've used it for four years without issue.
- I would like to be able to view commits by user.
- Conflict management could be improved.
- Navigating around a GitHub repo can be a little confusing until you're used to it.
GitHub is the standard for a remote GIT repository
- GitHub makes it easy to research and find what code changed and when.
- GitHub is easy to integrate with other tools.
- GitHub is reliable and dependable. I've used it for nine years without issue.
- When browsing history of a file, GitHub could make it easier to see the file after a particular commit instead of just being able to quickly view the commit. I'd like to be able to see the commit or the file itself in one click.
- I would like to be able to view commits by user.
- I would love to be able to traverse code on GitHub (go to definition, etc) - the good news here is that they are working on these features!
GitHub Review
- I prefer the way GitHub presents/manages code reviews.
- Making changes and opening pull requests are incredibly easy in GitHub. When you have a small change you need to make it's incredibly annoying to have to pull then branch then commit then push then go back to the browser to open a PR.
- Built-in wiki, issue tracking and reporting, and other tools can be incredibly useful.
- Browsing through a repo is pretty primitive. Digging into a folder is a link to a new page. For medium to large repositories, it's extremely cumbersome. The way Azure DevOps manages this is incredible. It gives you a folder explorer as you'd find in VS Code. You can quickly browse through a complex repo and make in line changes and submit a pull request all from inside the browser.
- Navigating around a GitHub repo can be a little confusing until you're used to it.
GitHub: The ubiquitous code repo solution that just works
- It's very easy to use. It walks you through much of anything that you may have questions with. Like how to link a local repo to your online one.
- It's ubiquitous. So many open-source projects are hosted on GitHub.
- Integrations abound: With that ubiquity, you get some great benefits of tie-ins existing and new tooling. For example, there are continuous integrations for deployment and cutting-edge integrations with tools like Zeit Now and Netlify.
- They have some nice-to-have features like security bots that will auto bump versions of dependencies for your project (if you desire.)
- The social aspect of it is pretty nice and works well.
- It's a good thing to have for a developer resume.
- Git can be cumbersome and confusing as a whole, so sometimes the UI is a little too basic.
- It got bought by Microsoft.
But then again, having a "GitHub profile" is a worthwhile endeavor for any developer looking to get a job.
Solid and reliable code version control system that makes distributed collaboration easy.
- GitHub's ease of use is one of its biggest strengths. The site is structured around Git, a code version control system, which is used by developers around the world. GitHub's UI is minimal and allows you to focus on what's important, whether it be your branches, pull requests, or issues.
- GitHub's integrations and tools are fairly ubiquitous. You'll likely find an integration with GitHub on every development tool with integrations. This makes it easy to incorporate in whatever workflow you may have.
- GitHub is incredibly reliable. I don't remember the last time it was down for any significant period of time. This is essential for companies that rely on it for their daily operations.
- While GitHub's spartan UI gets the job done and doesn't distract, it has some room for improvement to make things even more intuitive, especially for newer users. There's a certain amount of learning curve that could be made less steep.
- There's so much you can do with Github that it's fairly common for a user to possibly only use a small fraction of what GitHub can do. Improving Github's discovery features would help surface some of the non-essential features that are quite useful.
There aren't many situations where you should use GitHub. Even a single programmer would benefit from using it. Furthermore, it has other uses related to issue tracking and documentation that increase its value.
GitHub: Version Control for the Masses
- Github integrates really well with 3rd party systems, especially those used for continuous integration.
- Github provides a number of built-in tools to support the project management process.
- Github is ubiquitous in the sense that it's rare to find a platform or organization that hasn't used it, making it much easier for onboarding.
- Some of the extended features, like "Projects", can be a little too lightweight and users may spend too much time setting it up and not end up using it.
- The process for accepting invitations is kind of odd and doesn't always provide direct instructions to end-users.
Keep Your Code in the Cloud Without Sky-High Pricing
- GitHub is a great, free or low-cost cloud-based Git repository system for smaller teams; it's easy to add members and collaborators to one or more repositories, as well as to modify user roles and rights.
- GitHub provides a handy and highly transparent front end on top of the renowned Git system. Visibility into developer productivity, including code commits, is well-represented in GitHub's dashboards.
- GitHub provides extremely detailed and focused user support documentation online, allowing every team member to build their Git skills incrementally while ensuring that most basic issues are handled quickly via end-user self-service.
- GitHub packs a lot of functionality into its website; sometimes it can be difficult to navigate to the correct sub-page; the various drop-down selection boxes and sidebar menus can be confusing to users, especially ones with lightweight experience with the interface.
- GitHub allows for substantial flexibility in user account management - Administering dedicated team members and collaborators across a large number of repositories can get tricky, especially if users have varying access rights or roles across various repositories.
- Knowing the difference between user and organization accounts is key, there have been many times where I've wasted minutes looking at the wrong account trying to find a relevant setting or feature. For example, to view correct account billing information, one must be on the organization account, not the user account that has administrator rights for the organization.
Popular implementation of Git that gets the job done
- Easy and intuitive UI. This is a big plus for anyone wanting to just explore the repository without cloning it.
- Solid security model for repositories. You can provide Dev access or limited access to the repositories that enable collaboration across the org.
- Robust Pull Requests (PR) model. We use PR to do code reviews and the PR feature set is easy and intuitive. You can request PR's for other dev's, they can write comments at a specific line of code and you can reply back to that comment using their UI. All of this enables healthy communication on code.
- Endless customizations. Github is wildly popular, so it has solid integrations with other developer tools. You can also add webhooks to trigger deployments when a new branch has been merged into Master. This allows for a seamless continuous integration pipeline.
- Robust API documentation. The older version of Github offers easy REST interface and their newer API implementation uses GraphQL, which is robust and allows Dev's to build their own tools on top of Github
- Branch Protections. You can protect a specific branch on your repo and restrict who can directly commit/delete that branch. This prevents unintended code base deletions .
- Project tracking using Github. Github also provides tracking using its interface. You can create development tasks, assign them and track the left over work using the Github interface. Which makes it a one stop shop for everything.
- The Pull Request screen would hide the previous comments when a new commit has been made. This could be a bit confusing tracking all the comments on a PR.
- The network tracking branch could also use some improvement. It's hard to track all the open branches and where they all merge on the repo. The screen could use some improvement.
- It does not provide integrated CI tool. There are competitors of Github that provide integrated deployment tool and Github could use that improvement.
Collaborate Better with GitHub
- It acts as a central repository for projects that involve coding.
- It's a great platform for collaborating with team members.
- The platform is also a great resource to turn to when you are stuck on a coding problem; there's a real feeling of help and collaboration among the users.
- There is an excessive amount of email notifications when projects are updated; there is some control over the amount, but not enough control.
- If you are not familiar with the command line, working with GitHub can be a little challenging.
- For people new to the world of GitHub and Git, it can take a little bit of time to fully grasp how to utilize the platform.
GitHub - A Solid and Enjoyable VCS
- Makes collaboration over code incredibly simple. The UI is designed in such a way that anyone can pick it up very quickly. There are seemingly small features like being able to tag people in Issues, and the fluid process of doing PRs, that all come together to make it simple and enjoyable to use.
- It is very robust and reliable. We used the self-hosted version and it was incredibly reliable, with very few issues over a long span of time.
- It is very much the de facto standard for open source coding. This means that the friction for developers to both manage any open source parts of your code, as well as integrate open source code into your existing codebase, is very low.
- GitHub has a lot of third-party integrations, but it isn't natively integrated with other project management tools, like something like JIRA and Bitbucket are.
- It does its core work of code collaboration and review very well, but doesn't offer much in terms of other features. Gitlab, for example, has CI/CD tools built in. This item is a con for some and a pro for others.
GitHub is really designed around Git. There are wrappers to make other systems (like Mercurial or SVN) compatible, but this is merely hiding it from the user, while still using git underneath
GitHub - to isolate developer skill sets
- Identifying developers who have particular skill sets or interests beyond the stack they use.
- Demonstrating a developer candidate's knowledge, coding, and philosophies
- Showing that a developer is dedicated and passionate about their work - GitHub is voluntary - if they're spending time on there, it's because they want to be.
- Finding the passive seeker - GitHub isn't a job board.
- A lot of developers and recruiting sites don't realize how important location still is - not everyone is willing to allow remote workers. Being able to know where the developer lives would be so helpful.
- It would be great if companies could create exercises for people to complete - just to see if they are a fit. To make it part of the hiring process would require validation. If it's a voluntary exercise, it would be easy.
- Knowing the background & years of experience of the developer.
The go-to place for software and not only that
- While it's focused on technical people and developers, the entry barrier for non-technical people and project managers is relatively easy as well.
- The Projects and Wiki within a GitHub repo make it easier to keep all the aspects within GitHub and not clutter any process with 3rd party tools for documentation and project management.
- Uploading files is a neat feature which does not require to push files via git in a command line.
- Creating new folders in the interface is unintuitive as you'd need to create a new file first.
- Branches might be confusing for users not familiar with Git.
- Notifications are often overwhelming and they should be grouped in more customizable ways.
- The pull request system is very easy and intuitive to use. New engineers, even that don't use GitHub otherwise, can quickly get up and running with it.
- GitHub makes the cross between private/public very easy, but also protected. It's not possible for an employee to take a private repo public without manager / admin approval.
- GitHub has pretty good uptime for such a core business tool. they've had some issues, but that's generally expected over time.
- Some setup around private keys has been confusing over time. An account and project cannot have the same private key added, so it can be difficult to migrate from a single bot repo to multiple.
- Native integration with other tools like Jira for the project flow could make it more likely for a development team to be able to switch between the two.
If an organization is entirely private and has no open source interaction, other tools may work better. Such as on-premise source control.
Go Git GitHub and Be Good To Go!
- Quick and easy: It's easy to create a new repository and via the command line get updates push to your remote repos.
- Command line driven: After a small learning curve using the command line to drive pushing commits to GitHub is simple.
- Sharing: I worked with teams across the country and we're able to easily share repo's with minimal issues.
- Learning curve: While it doesn't take long to understand the basics, I have found there have been a few "gotcha's" that I didn't foresee causing some code changes to disappear or were hard to find.
- I have been spoiled in the past where I was usually the only one using my code, but recently I've been sharing my repo's, so I had to do versioning the right way. That was a little confusing on main vs. forked repo and why. Then there's the local repo and then syncing everything up. Takes some time to really get it.
GitHub: The Octocat is still going strong
- GitHub has an easy to use interface that allows you to create and customize the settings of your repositories in minutes. You can quickly push your code up to your new repo and assign team members to varying roles and access to perform different operations as required. This is important for reducing the time you have to spend on managing your teams.
- The documentation for the service is clearly and thoughtfully written with an eye for detail, and has terrific tutorials to help you progress from a novice to an advanced user.
- The service makes it easy to contribute to other projects and submit pull requests to get your code updates into the repository. This is important both for collaboration and for contributing to open source projects.
- It has an excellent search interface to locate repositories that you can review to learn and develop your technical skills and understanding of coding practices.
- Github offers free accounts to anyone and you can create as many repositories as you want. However, on the free plan all repositories are public; if you want to make your repo private (which may be necessary to protect your intellectual property), you will have to upgrade to a paid account. This business model may not be sustainable forever given that other services, like Atlassian Bitbucket, offer private repos on their paid accounts, and for many businesses this may be a more compelling and cost-saving option.
- The search feature, although powerful, can be a bit frustratingly limited at times, such as when you are looking for a specific expression within the code of a repository.
- Because it is based on Git, an often challenging toolset with a steep learning curve for command-line users, it can be daunting for some users to wrap their heads around the concepts of version control, although to be fair GitHub does offer decent GUI applications to make this easier.
- It can be a bit too easy at times to make a critical error that writes over an earlier change to your code which can be difficult and confusing to fix.
More necessary than water?
- Pull request interface allows for code review, strengthening the engineering team culture and creating a way for junior developers to grow and become more productive.
- Having timelines of the code commits assists greatly in bug hunting.
- While working through a project, using GitHub to view the differences between an engineer's branch and master helps the engineer work efficiently and effectively.
- No real time chat functionality.
- No git best practices/tutorials.
- The search functionality is very primitive.
What's all the GitHub-ub about?
GitHub addresses accessibility within the team and organization, as it is able to function as a team's main code repository, as well as a great way to track issues stemming from the project. This was done by utilizing GitHub issues, another useful aspect which organized bugs, issues, enhancements, etc., in a way that was useful for the project team.
- Branch organization: This had allowed teams to review other team member features separately before merging any pending changes (via pull request) into the master branch. The visual given within GitHub makes it clear what changes were made and allowed for easy code review.
- Issue Tracking: The bug tracking in GitHub allows teams to keep track of the different issues presented by the team, with a timeline of changes and happenings within the application.
- Integration: Its integration with other tools like CircleCI and Slack have made it extremely useful in keeping the team up to date with the changes made within the system.
- Cleaner User Interface: The user interface could be a little bit more intuitive to users that do not know all of the features GitHub has to offer.
- Clear way to see changes not in a pull request, since you can see individual file history fairly easily, but not overall application file changes,
- Better user search: When adding members to a project, sometimes the search is not as well organized as it could be.
Get GitHub
- GitHub has a great wiki system that we are just starting to implement to include details for the other non-technical members of the organization who have to use the software.
- Code inspections are widely used via pull requests. It makes it easy to look at the code being pushed into our master branch before it's pushed in.
- The third party integrations with GitHub are great. Azure allows us to connect directly to the GitHub repo and continuously deploy our code as the master branch gets updated.
- Under the hood it's a little confusing. This xkcd comic sums it up perfectly: https://xkcd.com/1597/