GitHub Reviews

Our customer has hundreds and thousands of applications, and 12 are part of my current project. Three of those applications are using GitHub as a code repository. The rest use Bitbucket. This customer is an Atlassian shop, so only I don't think more than 50 people use it.

Any code they develop will be version-controlled in this GitHub tool, and they use the branching and merging strategy to promote their code. We use it for version control and parallel development.  

The code in GitHub will be consumed by CI/CD pipeline for the build and deployment. We're using the latest version, which has a feature called GitHub Actions that enables CI/CD within GitHub, but this organization doesn't use GitHub Actions. They prefer Bamboo. 

The most valuable aspects of GitHub are version control and parallel development. I also appreciate the forking part, which allows us to release a specific set of features to the environment. 

Development teams can integrate this tool with their IDEs. GitHub provides command line instructions that should suffice. But customers wonder how to configure their IDE because you have to clone the repo, register the username with a password, and then switch. All those things need to be performed within the IDE. So I don't know whether those things are already available. That would enable the developer to integrate their IDEs with the GitHub repository.

The development team pushes the code into a repository, and the CI/CD pipeline will perform the build. We need open-source libraries to perform the builds. It would be helpful to have the ability to link to open-source libraries like npm libraries. I don't know if GitHub Actions provides this. I would like to see that in GitHub Actions if they don't. 

If you know the language for your build, it would be wonderful if GitHub automatically provided the link to those language-specific libraries so we don't need to search for the library. 

For example, if I'm using Node.js, I should be in a position to link it to the npm libraries associated with that version so my build using the CI pipeline will work well. Then the results in the library must go into an artifact repository. We'll have to depend on JFrog or Sonatype to provide binary repositories. Git has the repository technology, so why not offer a binary repository feature?

GitHub has a static code repository; now, GitHub Actions provides CI/CD. The resulting packages should stay somewhere. I don't know whether they have added this or not because I have not explored the GitHub Actions. They're all public libraries, and the result of the build or CI pipeline is a deployment-ready package. Where will we keep them? That's where we need a binary repository.

In addition to the binary repository, I think they could also include some vulnerability scans to ensure the code we deliver is clean. SonarQube is a static code analysis we use. There are tools coming from Fortify or Veracode that can ensure there is no security vulnerability in the code. It's a complete CA practice-related tenant. It would be wonderful if they could add this functionality.

We've used GitHub since 2013. 

GitHub performs well with the current load. I haven't had issues with the tool. 

We've never had an with the number of projects or developers using this tool. We've consistently had around a thousand developers over the years. The load will increase If a customer adds another 5,000 developers, then we may see some ups and downs in the scalability aspect of this tool, but we are all good with the scalability and stability so far.

I haven't interacted with the support team because things are working well and we've never had issues with the platform. 

We used open-source Git and later used GitLab, which is a flavor of Git. GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure Repos are all flavors of Git. The underlying version-control functionalities come from Git, but different vendors have their own flavors. I have experience in all four of these, which are Git.

I wasn't involved in the initial installation, but I installed the open-source flavor of Git, which was straightforward. Enabling the AD or LDAP is the most important thing in the enterprise setup. I have not looked into that because the customer enabled it. I never got a chance to integrate LDAP with the access management system within GitHub.

It's a GAT now. We are using the enterprise edition. I don't use open-source any longer. I have no clue because it's all owned by the customer. We are only consultants in the project, right? So we don't have access to those details.

I rate GitHub 10 out of 10. If you are using GitHub, your development team should define the branching strategy. One popular solution is Gitflow. There are different branching strategies available. You can use the main branch loan and a toggling feature development approach where one branch is sufficient. 

However, people with parallel releases need a parallel development strategy, where multiple branches will come into play. You should consider which branching strategies apply to your current industry and development strategy. Pick one of them, learn, and adopt it in your project.

We use GitHub because we don't have any paid solutions, and GitHub is freeware. It's open to all, and there aren't big licensing fees, like with Jira or any other tool. Apart from that, because it's totally cloud based, we don't need any extensions, and our developers and DevOps are all in sync and are able to get help with their second branches. So, we are all using the same platform to manage our product.

It's a cloud solution.

It is easily accessible. Even if someone doesn't have the paid version of the GitHub license, the minimum license, they can still use it for themselves. Sometimes Jira extensions are only installed on a server on the client side, so you need a VPN connection to access that, but with GitHub access is based on your ID, so you can access it from anywhere.

While we are working from home because of the pandemic—and when we didn't have proper VPNs—it helped us assess all our defects, which are placed in GitHub very easily. We don't need to rush the VPN connection and then access all these things. It was really easy. It also has two-factor authentication, which helps us authenticate users very easily.

A great feature is being able to have different repositories and different kinds of projects in a single solution at a single time. It's just a click away. If I compare it with Jira, that's one of the best features.

The only thing I see missing in GitHub is that it isn't very user friendly for key personnel who don't have in-depth, technical knowledge. In Jira, there are many functions to upload our test cases, and in GitHub we can only do it manually. There are functions which can be used to upload different files, but that still requires some technical knowledge. A layman cannot do it. Someone has to be trained with all those artifacts.

In the next release, I would like to see more QA friendly features like extensions. In Jira, you can modify different extensions. GitHub doesn't have that. They have many standard features, but sometimes I feel that there is something that I need but it's missing.

I've been using GitHub for more than three years.

GitHub is very stable. I have seen many different sections which are also easily accessible. For developing a product, you don't need to travel or do research work. In GitHub, there are many other repositories that are public. You can also navigate and see what others are doing if they have some public examples. It's like a type of overflow. You get many examples from this, and then by seeing those examples, you can directly implement that work and have a glimpse at other things.

Scaling the solution is very easy. 

In my organization, there are 130 people currently using GitHub. It has been used quite extensively because 130 guys are using it on a daily basis for checking their codes along with user stories.

We haven't needed anyone for maintenance of this solution.

I have previously used Jira. When I was using Jira, I wasn't applying projects, so they were funding the project and using the Jira platform for managing their product. Currently in the project I'm on, we don't have a lot of funds for Jira, so we searched for the open source and found GitHub. We liked it because it was solving all of our queries. Whatever our needs were, we were able to accomplish them with GitHub.

Initial setup was very simple.

There was no implementation strategy because GitHub is cloud based. It doesn't require any sort of deployment from our end. There was just a configuration that we needed to do to make it work with our code. There were simple sections which we needed to run, but our developers were able to collaborate easily.

We worked with our in-house team. There was no mediator between us.

If there are only 10 people using a particular repository, then GitHub is free. But if we increase the number of users, we need to pay the normal charge for GitHub.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. 

If someone is managing the product as well as doing the test management, they should go with GitHub. It's very easy to understand and track everything, and you can even see the different check-ins. 

If someone is specifically going for a test management tool and they need the proper agile-based tools, they should go for Jira.

We use the solution when developing new code or modifying existing code, changes are tracked and other team members can review the code before production. 

The ability to track external changes to repositories we are using has been very useful for us. If we have a piece of code that's being implemented and it makes use of modules that we're calling externally from, let's say NPM, and a defect is found in one of those NPM modules, we're immediately alerted that a defect has been found in libraries outside of our code space. This enables us to keep in touch with defects that other people have discovered in the code that we're using. GitHub informs us as other users discover broken code, which allows us to deal with issues very quickly, without investigation on our part. 

The versioning of the code and the tracking of changes are definitely some of my top features. 

The ability to code reviews with peers.

The automatic checking to make sure that any of the code in my repository is not out of date with any modules that I'm making use of.

The solution could have better support for the Markdown language.

I've been using the solution for over ten years, probably since its beginning. 

The solution is very stable, they have been working on it for over a decade. 

The product is extremely scalable. We've seen applications that are hundreds of thousands of lines of code and it doesn't have any problems working with them.

I'm a contractor for the Department of Veteran Affairs, and we've easily got several thousand people making use of the code just within the VA itself. It's being used by almost everyone on a product development team, including project managers, testers, developers, and documentation specialists.

The support is very good. We make use of Slack for communication and we have dedicated technical support for GitHub right in our Slack, which allows us to get responses within minutes from their technical support team.

The initial setup was very simple.  

It really depends on the application we're working on. I've seen deployments take as little as 15 or 20 minutes to push out a code change, up to hours or days depending on the functions that we're changing.

We implemented the solution via an in-house team. 

Due to the cloud environment, we don't need anyone for maintenance, that's all done by GitHub.

We have an enterprise licensing agreement, and I am not part of the finance department so I can't say how much it costs. 

I would rate GitHub a nine out of ten. 

The implementation is a hybrid public and private cloud. GitHub in some ways is similar to NPM, but it is a code repository primarily for code versioning systems. It's all cloud-based and we just upload our code to it. There are functions within GitHub that will take and monitor the code that's uploaded and any NPM repositories that it makes use of, and confirms that your code is making use of the latest code repositories. Anytime there is a discrepancy or an upgrade to one of the code repositories, it lets you know what that upgrade is.

They're constantly making improvements to the environment, adding new features and functionality. The new features and functions that they're coming out with are available to me sometimes before I realize I even need them.

We use GitHub extensively with any new product we are developing and we're going to keep doing it that way. I would advise anyone to implement this solution. 

We primarily use the solution for version control.

What I like about GitHub is the ease with which we can use it. For example, when you're developing an application that does not like compiling or does not require compiling, for example, PHP application and Python application. We need to update them on the client side. Sometimes we do automate using GitHub. We use it in a way that we can use it as an update tool on the client side so that when we make an update on the system on our side, it automatically pulls on the client side.

The ability to work as a team is great. In the world of software development teams, like controlling code versions, it's very important to stay on top of everything. GitHub helps us a lot in that. In a distributed work environment where I'm coding here, somebody in India is coding a different part on the same application. We can coordinate very easily on GitHub and synchronize our code.

It’s easy to set up.

The learning curve is small.

The stability is good.

The solution needs some more controls for deleting code and margin. Some of the challenges faced by developers are when maybe you have a junior developer who comes and maybe does something crazy on the repositories. More fine-grained control is required.

I created my GitHub account in 2013. On serious developments, I started around 2017. That's when I went deeper into using it on a day-to-day basis in teams for coordinating the development of various applications.

It’s quite stable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze.

When we are coding and see some unsafe code on the repository, GitHub is able to automatically scan and tell us, "You have a vulnerability somewhere. Maybe certain dependency you are using has vulnerability." And we can cut such vulnerabilities before we release the software.

I've never contacted tech support for GitHub. We have not come across issues. Some of the challenges we get, we can sort as a team. If I'm in Kenya, somebody in India or the US might have the knowledge to solve such a problem and I can rely on them. 

I haven't had a challenge that required me to contact tech support.

We used Bitbucket for version control.

We used TortoiseSVN for a short while for version control for one project. It’s a good one also.

It’s very straightforward to set up. It’s not complex at all.

The learning curve for GitHub is pretty small. The more advanced commands will take a bit of time to learn. However, the basic commands are easy to learn. In a few days, you're good to go.

If you are using public repositories, basically, it's free. For private repositories, you have licenses. For now, we haven't taken any license for our ends, as most of our repositories are public. If we are doing an in-house development, we don't need a license.

I’m using the latest version of the solution.

I’d recommend the solution. It’s ideal for teams.

I would rate it eight out of ten. It’s good. However, there is still room for improvement.

We use this product to host the code base for different development teams within our organization and for versioning the codes and integrating with CI/CD tooling. We have a partnership with GitHub and I'm a product manager. 

Using GitHub has been beneficial for us because it was an easy process for users and it has improved efficiency. In contrast to Bitbucket or Azure Repos, moving things over to GitHub was simple.

We like the simplicity of GitHub and that it is free of complications, as opposed to other tools on the market. Its ability to be integrated with third-party softwares such as Azure Pipelines or Jenkins, is great.

The solution lacks sufficient support in terms of professional services that could be provided proactively to customers. The product documentation could be improved. What currently exists on the GitHub website is not complete and not sufficient to help end users with customizations or integrations, tools for code quality, or app security. In the next release, I would love to see something around security as well as some code analysis and open-source vulnerability detection features. It would be helpful if there was a better DevOps offering from GitHub. GitHub Actions is still maturing.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

GitHub is scalable, we have around 120 users. They are mainly software developers and engineering managers. We have three people, DevOps engineers and support engineers, working with GitHub and we're likely to expand usage. 

Our technical support experience has been quite good in terms of response and expertise.

Positive

We previously used Bitbucket and Azure Repos. We switched to GitHub because of its ease of implementation and ease of onboarding new users, as well as its integration with third-party tooling.

The initial setup was straightforward. We are in a regulated industry with a large volume of organizations, and there are additional processes that need to be taken care of. Taking all that into account, the deployment took about 10 days. Implementation of GitHub alone just takes a few hours. We worked with a third-party vendor. 

The product certainly saves us a lot of time and that equals money. We save time in terms of how the code base can be managed and versioned. We have better control over the release of the product, and we have reduced the time that takes. We're getting a good ROI. 

I recommend this solution even though it does not provide the complete suite. There are DevOps services coming in from Microsoft, for example, and you need to go to GitHub Actions separately. Source code management is better on GitHub and I would rate that higher.

Overall, I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

GitHub is an excellent platform for organizing all sorts of information. I personally found it beneficial for keeping track of my coding projects, and recommendations, and occasionally making commits. By creating branches, I could easily focus on specific areas and even delve into things like creating my website using GitHub pages. Overall, I found these features to be very practical and advantageous.

In my case, I prefer to keep my repositories public, especially for small-scale organizations that don't require a high level of privacy. I find it useful to maintain a public profile because it allows me to showcase my work whenever I'm looking for a new job or updating my profile. By doing so, others can visit my profile, review my details, and verify the accuracy of my work history. This way, I can confidently stand by everything that I have accomplished throughout my career.

The most valuable feature of GitHub is version control and continuous integration.

The solution can improve by adding video guides, official guides, or short courses that cater to beginners who are new to the system. These resources could offer step-by-step guidance on how to use GitHub, including common procedures such as pulling and committing. Currently, many of us have to resort to searching for information on how to do these tasks via Google. An official guide provided by GitHub itself would be a valuable asset to newcomers and would save them time and effort.

There is potential for GitHub to enhance its features to be more like a Jenkins pipeline or CI/CD pipeline. While I currently use GitHub for code integration, I would like to see more emphasis placed on code management and automation. It would be beneficial to have more input on these areas within GitHub.

I have been using GitHub for approximately five years.

The stability could improve.

I rate the stability of GitHub a seven out of ten.

We have approximately 20 software developers using this solution.

I rate the scalability of GitHub a seven out of ten.

The support could improve. I have received online discussion forum support but it could improve.

Neutral

We might be switching to GitLab.

I rate the initial setup of GitHub a seven out of ten.

I am using the free version of the solution. However, there are some costs my organization pays.

My advice would be to take some time to clean up your repository and organize your data, step by step, in order to optimize its performance and make it more user-friendly. It can be challenging to work with applications like this when there is a lack of resources or input. However, by investing time in making your repository more efficient, you can reduce the potential for overwhelm and streamline your workflow.

I rate GitHub a seven out of ten.

Our primary use is for open-source code management and distributed version control. We use the solution to coordinate the work of developers, assisting them in developing and maintaining our source code. We also use the tool for code review purposes using the GitHub repository, where I can comment on or review lines of code for developers to edit and improve performance. They then receive a notification alerting them of the desired update, which the project developer and project lead can approve.

The best feature is the ability to track the history of all code changes, and it's easy to use. Additionally, as it's open source, anyone can use that feature resulting in distributed development. This opens the door to collaboration with different code and developer, feature, and master branches of development.

The solution also features robust security, high speed, and good integrity.

Excellent code management means that, even when developers accidentally delete sections of code, it's easily retrievable. GitHub reduces developer workload and saves them time.

The GUI design is poor, so I exclusively use the CLI, which is much easier to use and understand. It would be great to see the GUI updated to be more user-friendly. 

It isn't possible to run different branches simultaneously, and it would be good to see support for that.

We have been using GitHub for over seven years. 

GitHub is very stable; we can use it throughout the development process.

The solution is highly scalable. We have between 100 and 150 end-users, both developers and testers.

We haven't encountered an issue we couldn't fix ourselves or by using Stack Overflow or Google, so good community support is available.

The initial setup is very straightforward; creating a repository and the paths required for local and other branches is easy.

The deployment time depends on the project size. We follow an agile sprint cycle so we can carry out new deployments every one to two weeks, and they don't take much time at all.

GitHub is an open-source application. It's free to use.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use GitHub because it's open source and makes code management straightforward; it's simple to track different code versions and change history. It's an easy-to-use, efficient application.

For someone looking to use the solution for the first time, I would say it's straightforward and possible to learn the significant features in a day. Learning to clone projects, push and pull code, and use comments is simple.

We just use GitHub for the repository in our company.

So we have a central repository. So, we do recommend the need to push and pull everything, and that's how we use it.

The requests, push, pull, merge, and everything else in the solution are its valuable features. Later, people make their changes.

I don't have any comments on the improvement needed in the tool since I'm okay with it. I don't have anything really in mind. It's not like I am picky, and I don't need to be picky unless it's really an overblown, like, there are some bugs or some glitches or something like that in the solution. As of now, everything looks fine.

Scalability is an area with a shortcoming, because of which it has room for improvement.

I have been using GitHub for more than five years. We just use the solution for work in our company.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We plan to increase the usage of the solution. There are a lot of products out there in the market, but I wouldn't say I would recommend it, but if you use it, then it's fine. I don't really compare much as long as that's what is expected from the solution functionality-wise is fulfilled. So, then I am fine with it.

I don't use the solution's customer support.

Regarding the initial setup, I rate it an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on a private cloud since it is a corporate thing. We don't go for a public cloud.

The deployment is fast since we just have to run the script, and once it's done, it takes a few minutes.

My company has schedules, and we assign people to do the deployment. So, it's rotational. Let's say I do the deployment this week, and then another person does it next week.

I don't know about the solution's cost. My company purchased it. Before, we used to receive the free version, but then they purchased some of the features.

I am using the solution, and I am fine with it. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.