GitHub Enterprise 2.14 is ‘open goodness’ behind an enterprise firewall

GitHub Enterprise 2.14 has arrived this week.

This latest version of the web-based code repository and version control system also of course now features collaborative functions, options for bug tracking and features related to task management — it is, a portal with many Wikis indeed.

Now under the auspices, stewardship and ownership wing of Microsoft, the most prevalent new features in this version update is  unified search.

This search function is intended to allow users to wade through github.com content directly from GitHub Enterprise.

In order to do so, customers must have both a GitHub Enterprise account and a GitHub Business Cloud account.

The good news

What this means, in many ways, is an option to open source ‘innovations’ from a commercial enterprise footing behind an enterprise firewall  – and that (arguably) is not a bad thing i.e. why not open a window into the community contribution model of code development for enterprise users?

Could this, even, be the beauty of Microsoft’s ownership of GitHub?

GitHub says it’s a chance to find public content and collaborate with the entire GitHub community without sacrificing security.

Upping the API

Also here is the Checks API, which helps integrators build tools for continuous integration, linting (see below) and acceptance testing on GitHub.

As noted on StackOverflow: Linting is the process of running a program that will analyse code for potential errors. Lint was the name originally given to a particular program that flagged some suspicious and non-portable constructs (likely to be bugs) in C language source code.

We should also note (with regard to the Checks API) that previously, integrators could report success or failure of a build and include a link to more information using the Statuses API. With the new Checks API, they can specify more status information during builds and collect richer data, providing a more integrated experience for developers.

Other features

Users of the GitHub Enterprise 2.14 edition will also find multiple issue templates, ignore white space functions (when reviewing code, a diff with a number of white space changes can distract from the changes that matter), options to insist upon multiple reviewers (ss projects grow, users  may want additional reviews for a team’s code changes) and a variety of easier admin improvements.

A GitHub technical blog is posted here.

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