Are there any improvements to be done to Git? It seems like kind of a solved problem, like word processors or spreadsheets… most “improvements” to those are diminishing returns.
I don't mean to sounds like an MS apologist, btw. I fully predicted and hoped for an exodus from Github to GitLab or something back when it got acquired — I'm from the Microsux generation.
They could add stacked diffs, large monorepo features (allow user to view a slice of a repo), better submodule support (why can’t I PR multiple repos at once?). A good desktop app that is faster than the slow web client.
Stacked diffs is a huge one, and also where improving git would also improve LLM workflows. The bottleneck after code generation is PR reviews, and stacked diffs help break down large PRs into more digest-able pieces.
If you help humans collaborate better, you help LLMs collaborate better.
Because i can produce 5 clean, properly sized commits in the time it takes to do one round of reviews, so they have to be stacked. It's important that the CI run independently on each commit, and each commit builds on the work of the previous one.
but it could still be better for the truly gargantuan of code bases. Might not be worth it? Idk. Maybe with llm generated code churn, suddenly it becomes worth it? haha.
Just to think of a few, I want improved project management tools, better code review UI/UX, and cost-competitive integrated serverless hosting a la Vercel. GitHub could be a true one-stop shop with a bit more polish.
This is arguably why it makes more sense to bring GH under the umbrella. Azure integrations need to happen yesterday. The future is full-stack batteries-included low-codeish platforms that are easy to launch with and then boom you're one click from the Azure product suite. Tighter integration is the only way to do this because of the inherent distribution advantages.
Yeah, MS just too focused on desktop office and Azure enterprise customers
they should have launched an "firebase like" and full web framework "next.js like" to convert that into long term azure customer like its no brainer they didn't want to create that and recycling Teams forever
this is also issue with game development, like I know MS is big at desktop dev but they don't have presence in game dev other than xbox game studios which is fine but they could create their own game engine with all resources they have. they could save both for their usage in their massive studio while also strengthening their development pipeline from code,game engine to azure
GitHub personal access tokens could be a lot better. It'd be nice if you could assign tokens at the team level or you have more fine grained control over token permissions.
And yes, I know "Fine Grained Tokens" exist but they don't seem to be usable almost anywhere and the fine grain level of control isn't actually very fine grained so they kind of suck.
so if you create an Organization to host your project(s), now you cannot enable that maintainers make changes on incoming Pull Requests; something that is very useful and perfectly available for projects that live under a normal username.
Github Pages STILL don't have any sort of built-in analytics available. I shouldn't need GA or something else to track the basic website metrics when you absolutely know that MS and GH have been tracking these things the whole time. People have had issues up asking for this for literal years.
I've just been shunted from TFS Git (Azure DevOps?) to GitHub.
The PR UI is taking some getting used to.
Dev changes code near a comment I made? Comment is marked "Outdated" and hidden. If I open it, can I see what change they made next to the comment? Nope, I have to go find it manually!
It sorts X.Y below X.Y.A, X.Y.B etc. in the file listing.
When I select a file in the listing I'd like to just have that file open, not scroll to it in a list of all the changes.
The first PR I did showed a ton of changes that had already been merged from common history. I can see the merge commit you made, GitHub, I know you know none of these changes are actually being made.
Not caring if a required action hasn't run automatically. No "run" option, not even a "this isn't ever going to run", just "waiting for result".
Weirdly, showing the result of an action on the source branch, when it needs to pass on the merge commit.
I've not yet figured out how to require different approvers for different branches, although that one might be on my org settings. It's either the people in the codeowners file or any contributor?
No way to allow a ruleset to be bypassable while making the approvers still manually bypass it themselves. I want to know if I'm getting it wrong as much as I want to stop my junior devs messing up.
Finding conflicts in a PR between two branches that can merge cleanly if I do it locally.
Not letting you resolve conflicts in the UI if the source branch is protected, even though the UI gives you the option to commit the resolution to a new branch if you do it for an unprotected source branch.
Updating the source branch in the PR if you choose to do the above - something you can't do yourself!
Not showing branches in a hierarchy (as if they were directory paths)
That's absolutely the right question to ask. If MS just left GitHub alone, it would be fine for open source projects for years to come. The enterprise side is a little different, there they still have a lot of work to do to round out some of their more advanced features.
What worries me isn't that they stop investing. What worries me is that they actively destroy the current project while turning it into AI garbage.
Github should have the product sophistication/complexity of Atlassian with the distribution advantage of Microsoft. Anything less is an execution failure IMO.
Not even mentioning AI, which is a huge opportunity also.
Their CI / script runner tool is still total garbage. Starting with the rampant security holes (oh, make sure you pin everything you use by hash, which essentially nobody does; what was that about secure by default rather than secure by extra effort again?) and following with the only way to test it is to deploy over and over.
While git itself can be improved upon, the GitHub is not git; there are many improvements to GitHub that people have been requesting for many years now.Also, they could even just not make it worse and that would be a welcome change from their recent strategy
there's a lot that could be improved with conflict resolution and merge trains/stacked merges. see https://pijul.org for what's possible but not available in git
I don't mean to sounds like an MS apologist, btw. I fully predicted and hoped for an exodus from Github to GitLab or something back when it got acquired — I'm from the Microsux generation.