GitHub

GitHub to MySQL

GitHub to MySQL is a handy little app in PHP that pulls labels, milestones and issues from GitHub into your local MySQL database. This is useful for analysis and backup purposes.

There are a few example queries provided that show issues vs. pull requests, average number of days to merge a pull request over the past weeks, average number of pull requests open every day, and total number of issues.

I think this tool can be easily extended to pull other information from GitHub, such as release notes, projects, web hooks. Also, if you are using multiple version control services, such as BitBucket and GitLab, extending this tool can help with merging data from multiple sources and cross-referencing it with the company internal tools (bug trackers, support ticketing systems, CRM, etc).

This is not something I’ll be doing now, but I’m sure the future is not too far away.

GitHub Topics

GitHub blog introduces Topics – a tagging/labeling mechanism for GitHub repositories, which makes searching by technology, topic, etc so much better.

This is a much welcome feature.

composer-patches – Simple patches plugin for Composer

composer-patches is a plugin for Composer which helps with applying patches to the installed dependencies. It supports patches from URLs, local files, and from other dependencies.

I think this is absolutely brilliant!

It’s quite often that one finds bugs and issues in external dependencies. Once the bug (or even the pull request with the fix) is submitted to the vendor, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks to be resolved and a new version to be released.

If you have a fix for the problem and need it in your project right away, and can’t wait until the vendor releases the new version, your best choice is to fork the dependency, fix the problem, and use your repository instead of the vendor’s package. This works, but it’s messy.

With the patches plugin to composer, you can still use the vendor’s package and just apply a patch with composer, until the new version is available. Clean and simple.

This also helps with testing things and working with different changes by different people, if you want to try things out – no need to choose between multiple repositories. Just select the patches that you want and apply them at the environment you need.

Given that most development work is happening on GitHub these days, this composer plugin is even more useful than what I might think at first. You see, GitHub provides patch and diff URL for each commit – all you need to do is add the extension to the URL. For example, take this recent commit to my dotfiles repository.

If you add a “.patch” extension to this URL, you’ll get a patch output, which is useful for git am, and other commands (more on using git with email):

If you add a “.diff” extension to this URL, you’ll get a unified diff output, which you can either apply with diff and patch utils, or use with the composer-patches plugin.

So, this gives you a way of applying any commit on GitHub (and other repositories) via composer to any of your dependencies. This is mind blowing!

S3 static site with SSL

s3-static-site

“S3 static site with SSL and automatic deploys using Travis” is a goldmine of all those simple technologies tied into a single knot for an impressive result. It has a bit of everything:

Jekyll – simple, blog-aware, static sites engine, for managing content.
GitHub – for version control of the site’s content and for triggering the deployment chain.
Travis CI – for testing changes, building and deploying a new version.
Amazon S3 – simple, cheap, web-enabled storage of static content.
Amazon CloudFront – simple, cheap, geographically-distributed content delivery network (CDN).
Amazon Route 53 – simple and cheap DNS hosting and domain management.
Amazon IAM – identity and access management for the Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Let’s Encrypt – free SSL/TLS certificate provider.

When put altogether, these bits allow one to have a fast (static content combined with HTTP 2 and top-level networking) and cheap (Jekyll, GitHub, Travis and Let’s Encrypt are free, with the rest of the services costing a few cents here and there) static website, with SSL and HTTP 2.

This is a classic example of how accessible and available is modern technology, if (and only if) you know what you are doing.

GitHub Improvements

GitHub has recently announced a whole lot of improvements to their service and functionality. For me personally the following bits were super exiciting.

Improvements to the code review

Approve or require changes

You’re no longer left on your own to figure out if a comment was important. Or if that emoji means “Go ahead, looks great!” Or “Please no, this is likely going to bring the site down!”

With Reviews, you can leave your comments as suggestions, approve the changes, or request additional changes—on any pull request.

Improvements to the GitHub Profile page

See what’s behind your green squares

GitHub profiles show your life and career as a developer. We’ve taken the contribution graph to new heights with your GitHub timeline—a snapshot of your most important triumphs and contributions.

But there is more – projects, notes, comment drafts, etc. Check the full announcement.