By now you know that I can’t praise GitHub enough. It is one of the best tools for developers ever. Seriously. It’s up there with git itself, and even Vim. If you aren’t using it yet, stop whatever it is you are doing and rush there. Now. I’m not kidding.
So, anyways. Today GitHub added another awesome feature – Releases. These are basically git tags on steroids.
I’ve been already playing around with the idea of releases for our work projects. See, for example, phing-version branch of my sandbox repository. It worked, but it’s not perfect. With GitHub Releases however I’ll have pretty much everything I need – release notes, easy full diff reviews, binary attachments, etc.
A little side note for binary attachments: I mostly work with PHP, which doesn’t really need binary attachments. But I am a part of other, “heavier” projects, developed in C++ for example. This feature will come in handy. Also, as far as PHP goes, I was playing with the idea of using RPM and YUM as a mechanism for managing installation, upgrade, and downgrade process.
Back to GitHub Releases now. This is an excellent example of why you should use GitHub instead of setting up your own environment. You’ll waste more time and money. It will be ugly. And you’ll have to maintain it. With GitHub you’ll focus on your actual development work and will get excited every now and then when they add a new feature.
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