10 GitHub Options That You Are Lacking Out On

On this weblog, we’ll discover the characteristic that retains drawing me again to GitHub, turning it into a whole ecosystem for my coding and knowledge initiatives. Past code sharing, you may host your individual web site totally free, combine AI all through the event course of, use a cloud IDE, conduct interactive code critiques, seek for new instruments within the market, set department guidelines, use GitHub Desktop, and extra.

1. GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces provides a completely configured, cloud-based improvement atmosphere that permits you to begin coding with out the effort of organising your native atmosphere. It’s much like VSCode, however it runs within the cloud and permits you to sync your settings and obtain extensions shortly. Codespaces will be accessed from any machine with web entry, making it a flexible instrument for builders on the go. Whether or not you’re at residence or touring, you may entry your mission, work on it, and even deploy your utility utilizing Codespaces.

2. GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is powered by AI and helps you within the code editor, browser, CLI, GitHub Cell, and inline chat, provide immediate strategies, and generates commit messages in real-time. It considerably quickens your coding course of by offering context-aware strategies, providing a whole ecosystem of AI help that will help you at each stage of your improvement course of.

3. GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions automates software program improvement workflows by permitting you to construct, take a look at, and deploy your code straight from GitHub. You can too run workflows based mostly on any GitHub occasion. I exploit this characteristic for MLOps, DataOps, and LLMOps. It helps me take a look at my code, verify for dependencies, format my code, prepare my fashions, consider the outcomes, and based mostly on the outcomes, deploy the mannequin. Setting it up may be very straightforward in comparison with some native options like Jenkins.

4. GitHub Pages

With GitHub Pages, you may create and publish web sites straight from a GitHub repository. This characteristic is ideal for internet hosting mission documentation, blogs, resumes, and portfolios. I exploit it to deploy my Knowledge Science portfolio, my writing portfolio, and my aspect mission web site. I’ve even arrange the area identify so that individuals can simply sort abidaliawan.com and look at my web site that’s hosted utterly totally free on GitHub. It solely took me a couple of hours to set it up.

5. Code Evaluation Assignments

I just lately found this characteristic: You assign a staff member to assessment a pull request. The assigned particular person simply critiques the modifications and feedback on them. Finally, they approve the pull request to be merged. One of these code assessment helps the staff keep away from unhealthy code from being merged. You possibly can even assist your staff by commenting on the modifications made and serving to them appropriate these errors.

6. GitHub Market

The GitHub Market provides a variety of instruments and integrations that may improve your improvement workflow. From CI/CD instruments to mission administration apps, {the marketplace} offers options that may be seamlessly built-in into your GitHub initiatives, serving to you to streamline your processes and enhance productiveness. I’ve built-in a whole lot of apps and actions that I found from {the marketplace}; most of them are free, and I exploit them to enhance my workflow, particularly for looking for safety points in my repositories and decreasing file sizes.

7. Protected Branches

Protected Branches are a useful characteristic that preserves the integrity of your code by stopping unauthorized modifications. You possibly can implement guidelines comparable to requiring pull request critiques earlier than merging, guaranteeing that solely totally reviewed code is built-in into your major department. Moreover, you may set guidelines for any department, making it essential for staff members to observe particular steps to merge the code. This characteristic has made my life simpler.

8. GitHub Discussions

We are able to use the “Issues” tab to report bugs or request options. Nonetheless, GitHub Discussions offers a devoted area on your neighborhood to return collectively, ask and reply questions, and have open-ended conversations that aren’t associated to present improvement. This characteristic fosters neighborhood engagement and is usually a invaluable different to Discord or Slack.

9. GitHub Discover

GitHub Discover helps you uncover new and trending initiatives, repositories, occasions, subjects, and academic assets. It offers personalised suggestions based mostly in your pursuits and exercise, making discovering initiatives that align together with your expertise and passions simpler. I exploit it to search out viral initiatives on LLMs and AI and likewise search for actually good initiatives from which I can study. 

10. GitHub Cell, Desktop Apps, and CLI

GitHub provides cell and desktop purposes that help you handle your repositories on the go. These apps present a user-friendly interface for reviewing code, merging pull requests, and staying up to date in your initiatives. Moreover, the GitHub CLI brings GitHub to the command line, permitting you to handle points and pull requests straight out of your terminal. You possibly can management your total GitHub profile by way of the GitHub CLI instrument. These instruments are lifesavers for freshmen as they only have to make use of the UI and run some instructions to provoke workflow runs. 

Conclusion

GitHub is greater than only a code-sharing platform. Its superior options can considerably improve your improvement workflow, enhance collaboration, and make sure the safety and high quality of your code. By leveraging instruments like GitHub Codespaces, GitHub Pages, Code Evaluation, and the GitHub cell and desktop apps, you may remodel your coding expertise. 

These options have been life-changing for me, streamlining duties that used to take hours into mere minutes. Whether or not you are resolving points from the consolation of your mattress with a cell in hand or deploying a web site seamlessly, these instruments empower you to work smarter, not tougher.
 
 

Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is an authorized knowledge scientist skilled who loves constructing machine studying fashions. At present, he’s specializing in content material creation and writing technical blogs on machine studying and knowledge science applied sciences. Abid holds a Grasp’s diploma in know-how administration and a bachelor’s diploma in telecommunication engineering. His imaginative and prescient is to construct an AI product utilizing a graph neural community for college students combating psychological sickness.

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