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Come for the software versioning, stay for the community
April 11, 2018

Come for the software versioning, stay for the community

Dylan Eikelenboom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with GitHub

We are using Github within our software research and development department as our software versioning system. We have our codebase available in multiple projects on GitHub and continuously make adjustments to it using Git branches, merge requests and tags. Our team also reviews new merge requests within Github. With this, we are able to have a history of our code, so we can always revert back to an earlier point in time.
  • The interface of Github is clear and all frequently used functionalities are easy to find.
  • The community using Github is very open and friendly, so even having a publicly available repository is fine.
  • Being able to write in markdown is a plus, in my opinion.
  • Github makes it easy to contribute to public or open source projects
  • Only accounts that pay the premium fee can create hidden or private repositories.
  • Github is great for software versioning, but I have found it to be difficult to use for Agile project planning.
  • The allowed maximum file and repository size is smaller than its competitors.
  • Github is relatively cheap to use, even for a larger team, but it affords us to have a more efficient and streamlined software development process.
Github has a much larger community of users than Gitlab, and its interface is slightly more 'clean' and easy to navigate. Github's brand name is also more recognizable and its users are generally very helpful and willing to contribute to exciting open source projects.

Gitlab is mainly focused on private repositories, which can be created for free in Gitlab, but not in Github (paid subscription). Gitlab also has better and easier to use tools to streamline workflow, with issue boards, burndown charts etc.
Github is great for pure software versioning, especially if it involves public or open source projects. The Github community is very large, so having the project listed there will attract alot of attention.

If you want to have private repositories, it requires you to have a paid account, so this is something to keep in mind when deciding the right system to use.

If you want to have a complete system for both software versioning and project planning, I would recommend to look elsewhere for systems that have this type of planning implemented better. This is not a detriment to Github, but it is somehting to keep in mind.

Using GitHub

10 - All users are members of the software development team as software engineers, architects and testers.