GitHub Has Too Many Hidden Features
tl;dr: A variety of lesser-known but useful features on GitHub: (1) Pressing '.' on a repo main page opens it in "github.dev," an online VSCode instance where you can edit code, push commits, and review pull requests. (2) The "feature preview" option allows users to enable experimental features like rich Jupyter diffs. (3) Regex search is available both within a repo and sitewide by wrapping the search in slashes. (4) Keyboard shortcuts like 'Y' to change the URL from branch-based to commit-based, and 'I' to hide comments in a PR. (5) GitHub.dev can be used on other people's repos and saves work across browser sessions. (6) Labeling a backtick-codeblock as 'suggestion' in a PR comment shows it as a line change.featured in #445
How To Use GitHub Copilot: Prompts, Tips, And Use Cases
- Rizel Scarlett Michelle Mannering tl;dr: 3 best practices for prompt crafting with GitHub Copilot: (1) Set the stage with a high-level goal. (2) Make your ask simple and specific. Aim to receive a short output from GitHub Copilot. (3) Give GitHub Copilot an example or two.featured in #426
How Much Are GitHub Stars Worth To You?
- Yassin Eldeeb Aleksandra Sikora tl;dr: The authors show us how stars have become a commodity and how to evaluate an open source project. “The best and most obvious way to judge an open-source project is to look at the code but this can be kind of tedious… so an alternative that we have all naturally developed on our own or have been advised to, is to see how many people have starred a project, and then pick the one with the most stars.”featured in #420
Inside GitHub: Working With The LLMs Behind GitHub Copilot
- Sara Verdi tl;dr: “Due to the growing interest in LLMs and generative AI models, we decided to speak to the researchers and engineers at GitHub who helped build the early versions of GitHub Copilot and talk through what it was like to work with different LLMs from OpenAI, and how model improvements have helped evolve GitHub Copilot to where it is today—and beyond.”featured in #415
A Beginner's Guide To Prompt Engineering With GitHub Copilot
- Rizel Scarlett tl;dr: “After more experimentation, I improved my communication methods with GitHub Copilot by providing context, examples, and clear instructions in the form of comments and code. In this blog post, I'll discuss top tips to help you get the most out of GitHub Copilot.”featured in #411
featured in #403
Common Pitfalls Of GitHub Actions
- Ashish Bhatia tl;dr: When you create Actions via GitHub’s UI, it provides templates for setting up the build. Ashish believes the template is broken. There is no: (1) Dependency caching (2) Cancelation of stale executions. (3) Path filtering. (4) Timeouts. He gives solutions for each.featured in #401
GitHub Copilot X: The AI-Powered Developer Experience
- Thomas Dohmke tl;dr: GitHub Copilot is evolving into an AI assistant, introducing chat and voice for Copilot, and bringing Copilot to pull requests, the command line, and docs to answer questions on your projects. Thomas illustrates how that will work.featured in #400
Why Some GitHub Labels Illegible
- Moritz Firsching tl;dr: On GitHub, it’s possible to select the color of a label when assigning it to a pull request or an issue. When using GitHub with the Light default theme, the color of the text on those labels depends on the brightness of the color used: The darker the color of the label the brighter the color of the text of the label and vice versa. Moritz discusses shows why this is problematic.featured in #398
The Technology Behind GitHub’s New Code Search
- Timothy Clem tl;dr: "We were motivated to create our own solution by three things: (1) We’ve got a vision for an entirely new user experience that’s about being able to ask questions of code and get answers through iteratively searching, browsing, navigating, and reading code. (2) We understand that code search is uniquely different from general text search. (3) GitHub’s scale is truly a unique challenge... north of 200 million repositories.featured in #388