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8 Productivity Tips for GitHub

Darren Burns on January 09, 2019

With the recent announcement of unlimited private repositories, let's take a few minutes before we push up the code we don’t want anyone else to se...

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Sarthak Sharma • Jan 9 '19

Great post Darren 👏🏻👏🏻

——————

Food for thought

For building such powerful and fast search system Github must be indexing our code. Is that ohk? 🤔
It’s make me uncomfortable as these features work on private repos as well.
I always use to wonder why Microsoft bought Github. What you guys think?

rhymes • Jan 9 '19

Hi Sarthak! You might want to take a look at GitHub's terms of service, specifically the section about private repos.

If you're not OK at GitHub potentially having access to your code under the terms then you should probably consider a self hosted solution.

It really depends on what you're comfortable with.

Sarthak Sharma • Jan 10 '19 • Edited

Point is awareness. You know this, I know this but most developers out there, they are clueless.

rhymes • Jan 10 '19

Don't know, I think you underestimate developers or overestimate how much companies care about this a little bit.

Most cloud providers support teams can see your code if you authorize them to when you open a ticket and most terms include authorization to access your code, even if only for backups or redundancy.

With severless computing I'm even authorizing you provider to take my code, put it god knows where so you can start it up to serve customers.

BTW the argument could be made with data (which in a lot of cases is far more important than the code).

Sarthak Sharma • Jan 10 '19

Agreed, Data is more important but that also being stoled by these big crops. The only thing I'm concerned about is Microsoft. Github can be a great resource for them to build DeepCoder . Let's hope I'm wrong about this. 😃

rhymes • Jan 10 '19

Github can be a great resource for them to build DeepCoder.

Is it stolen though? GH has had a API for years. All the article says is that they used existing software code (which you can find everywhere thanks to open source) to feed the AI.

I understand your distrust but if you believe your data is being actively stolen by a cloud provider (not talking about privacy related data leaks of companies in general) I think you can likely sue them.

It would be a giant blowback if the database of a customer is being stolen for internal usage against the terms of service. Imagine the PR nightmare and I reckon many people would migrate instantly.

I think it's far easier and less risky for cloud providers to just copy your idea and offer it as a standard service, like AWS seems to be doing from time to time :D

Sarthak Sharma • Jan 10 '19

It's okay. I respect your way of thinking too. The thing is that other people should be thinking more about their privacy than they do and if they that's good. Often free is not free and we as developers should be more cautious than others. 😊

rhymes • Jan 10 '19 • Edited

True that! Privacy is paramount these days. Companies are out there doing shady things, like selling your location data or... being Facebook :D

Darren Burns • Jan 9 '19

Thanks Sarthak :)

Daniel Schroeder • Jan 12 '19 • Edited

Thanks for the great info!

Another awesome tip for reviewing pull requests is to append ?w=1 to the URL. This will make the pull request ignore whitespace changes :)

Also, if you want a more natural GitHub Pull Request review experience, check out the GitHub Pull Request extension for VS Code.

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Looks awesome 😊

Irek Mirgaleev • Jan 10 '19

I will shamelessly promote my github extension for chrome that helps me reviewing large PRs where it shows a hierarchical view of all changed files so you can see the scope of changes at a glance: chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...

Valentin Berlier • Jan 26 '19

For anyone using vscode look into github.com/Microsoft/vscode-pull-r...

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Looks really cool! I'll give it a shot this week 🙂

Thorsten Hirsch • Jan 17 '19

Press ? to see the available keyboard shortcuts.

Hisham Mubarak • Jan 13 '19

I always wondered why there is a weird / on the search bar of github, now I know why. Awesome post. All of them are so helpful and I didn't know a single one of them, now I do. Thanks a lot.

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Happy to hear that 🙂

Tyler Crammond • Jan 15 '19

Great tips, I didn't know about the search hotkeys at all. Thanks

Claudio Pinkus • Nov 6 '20

Thanks Darren for the tips. I would like to know if you checked CodeStream, our IDE extension for VS Code, Visual Studio and Jetbrains editors that does some of these things and also includes PRs in your IDE with the ability to add comments on any line of code, not only what's changed. Would love your feedback!

Robert Cooper • Jan 23 '19

This article is absolute gold. Will definitely be using the t keyboard shortcut to search for files.

Darren Burns • Jan 23 '19

Thank you so much 🙂

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Totally agreed. I'd only use it for really small things that I'm confident won't result in a broken build.

I don't know that I'd disable it though. If you've got GitHub linked to a CI platform then in the worst case it should result in a single broken commit.

Peter Witham • Jan 9 '19

Thanks, Darren, this list is a real gem of tips for all levels of GitHub users.

Darren Burns • Jan 9 '19

Thank you Peter.

Nick Holden • Jan 12 '19

Awesome list, Darren! ✨

I didn't know about the hotkey to search for functions in code changes. Going to give it a shot this week!

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Thanks Nick 😄

Tom VanAntwerp • Jan 11 '19

I had no idea about the suggested revision feature--going to start using that a lot. Thanks for sharing!

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

It's pretty helpful for quick fixes 😄

dr4gon • Jan 14 '19

This is fantastic! Keep up the good work!

Shayne Darren • Jan 9 '19

Any idea if you can get Octotree working for GitHub enterprise(privately hosted)?

Darren Burns • Jan 9 '19

You can use it with if you grant the correct permissions. Here's a guide:

github.com/ovity/octotree#enterpri...

Hope that helps :)

Manuel Spagnolo • Jan 10 '19

And unfortunately only on Chrome :/ No way for me to make it work on firefox

André Costa Lima • Jan 11 '19 • Edited

Thanks for the valuable tips. 👌
Wasn't aware at all of some of these.

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

You're welcome 🙂

Tiago Celestino • Jan 15 '19

I did know about "suggestions" and "saved replies", they are amazing.

I recommend also the Refined GitHub.

Thanks for tips!

Fanny • Jan 13 '19

Thanks!

Darryl Young • Jan 15 '19

Great post, Darren. Thanks for sharing.

Kyle Galbraith • Jan 15 '19

Great post Darren! I use a few these in my day to day.

Paul Isaris • Jan 15 '19

Awesome article, thanks!

Ido Shamun • Jan 10 '19

Genius tips! Thanks :)

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it Ido 🙂

Carles Mata • Jan 11 '19

Great post! I'll take note of almost all your tips.

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Thanks 🙂

Emanuele • Aug 6 '19

Cool post, thanks :)

GruSer • Oct 31 '19

Thanks for the interesting information...

Aditya Rao • Jan 11 '19

Thanks for octotree and fuzzy file search. Never knew GitHub has such gems.

Darren Burns • Jan 13 '19

Glad I could introduce you to some new features!

Basti Ortiz • Jan 9 '19

Learned quite a lot today. Thank you for this post!

Darren Burns • Jan 9 '19

Brilliant! Then my mission is accomplished 😊

Claudio Pinkus • Oct 23 '20

Thanks @_darrenburns for this! Have you checked the CodeStream extension for VS Code, VS and Jetbrains? (Disclaimer - I work there). Would love to get your impression.