14 ms·

GitHub Public Roadmap

483 points by nicolas_ 6y ago

codeviking 6y ago
I love how well organized and executed this is. I love that the issues each share a common format and provide concise yet clear documentation. The concise bit here is key -- I've had trouble perusing similar, open product roadmaps from other products because of the verbosity / level of detail. Kudos to GitHub's team for doing such an excellent job in communicating and managing the roadmap. Particularly given the size or the organization -- this is no small feat.
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  Are we even looking at the same document? It communicates nothing. Worst roadmap I've ever seen.
cltsang 6y ago
Interesting that there's no mention of agile tools like Project cards, issue dependencies, etc.. I wonder if the plan to incorporate features from Azure DevOps is still on-going.
- aupright 6y ago
  If you're looking for agile power-ups to GitHub Issues, there's a few great options in the ecosystem. Check out ZenHub if you're looking for things like issue dependencies, epics, multi-repo boards, etc. and want to stay in GitHub. GitKraken Boards are also a great option and integrate with their Git GUI.
  - spankalee 6y ago
    My team uses ZenHub extensively, but it's not that great for OSS projects IMO. The extra metadata and organization that ZenHub allows isn't visible via GitHub issues, so it's basically just for the core team. Issue dependencies should be part of the core issue tracker. And GitHub has multi-repo boards, but only for repose in the same org.
- JoyrexJ9 6y ago
  I believe the direction is to keep GitHub focused on where developers want to be, and not become some bloated planning tool for project managers and enterprises
flixic 6y ago
In case you are interested in Dark Mode, it's not on this roadmap.
- natfriedman 6y ago
  This is our first time publishing such a roadmap, and it isn't 100% complete yet. More items will fill in over time. But we needed to start the journey somewhere! Dark mode is coming. The foundational work we are doing first is to replace all our custom HTML and CSS with components that are more readily themable. This will also help us improve accessibility, and help us replace our mobile web site with a fully responsive UI.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Could you please consider open sourcing the frontend JS and CSS? Right now it's impossible to use github proper without these assets being minified and/or proprietary.
    - natfriedman 6y ago
      Yes, thank you for the input.
    - hawkoy 6y ago
      https://primer.style/ https://primer.style/ Are you looking for this?
- r3trohack3r 6y ago
  You can put the entire web into “dark mode”: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/ Highly recommend. Also worth changing the default background color in Firefox to avoid burning your retinas every time a page loads.
  - wonderlg 6y ago
    > to avoid burning your retinas every time That kind of stuff is exactly why I’ve stopped going “dark everything.” Some apps/websites are and will forever be WHITE and, if I use dark mode plus max screen brightness (to increase contrast), I’ll be blinded every time I open/visit one. You know what doesn’t blind me? Using regular white pages with low brightness. Bonus points: my battery lasts longer.
open-paren 6y ago
More direct link to the roadmap: https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1
danicgross 6y ago
It’s one thing for a startup to do this while small. A whole other level of evolution to do it while you’re large. Imagine Apple suddenly publishing their roadmap. This type of organizational neurogenesis done as an adult is impressive. EDIT: I am in admiration of the change, regardless of opinion on the value of public roadmaps. It’s just rare to see big companies make big changes. Sign of youthful vitality and health, in my opinion.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  Can you explain why? I really don’t see the draw of public roadmaps. I buy a product because it works for me now. If there are improvements I need in the future the company either implements them or they don’t. A public roadmap doesn’t improve my experience at all. In fact, I might be less likely to buy the product. This feels like it opens github up to the vocal minority to scream and yell publicly about features they want. Some of which could negatively impact other users. And github will have to succumb to the pressure of that minority.
  - Solstinox 6y ago
    The only vocal minority that counts in business is the minority writing the biggest checks. They probably get access to roadmaps anyway.
    - rvnx 6y ago
      Absolutely, when you are a big enterprise customer, you get access to the roadmap of most of your partners.
    - ryanSrich 6y ago
      With Github I’m not so sure. The online mob usually gets what they want. Having said that, the overlap between those paying the most for Github and those demanding the most might be 100%.
  - tnolet 6y ago
    A public roadmap functions as a communications tool and sounding board. However, it does not negate strong product leadership or moderation of course. Interestingly, my small SaaS was using GitHub projects as a public roadmap for the last 2 years already! Even at our small scale it has already proven useful for finding beta users, getting feedback etc. https://github.com/checkly/public-roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/checkly/public-roadmap/projects/1
jrochkind1 6y ago
I see a LOT of planned continuing investment in "Actions". Makes sense.
jiripospisil 6y ago
> Discussions live in your project repository, so they’re accessible where your community is already working together. Their threaded format makes it easy to start, respond to, and organize unstructured conversations. Questions can be marked as answered, so over time a community’s knowledge base grows naturally. I can imagine "GitHub Discussions" [0] cutting off a significant number of Stack Overflow questions. [0] https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104
- isiahl 6y ago
  If you didn't know, Discussions is already live for some repositories[1] [1] https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions
  - rattray 6y ago
    This looks really cool. A sweet spot for certain kinds of questions that people abuse Issues for, but never felt right. Very important things like "what is the best practice for X" or "I have this problem but haven't yet isolated the cause, can anyone help?". This is quite some timing for me, since the StackOverflow announcement earlier today had me thinking what could replace it. This is a clear, promising possibility.
    - sah2ed 6y ago
      > This is quite some timing for me, since the StackOverflow announcement earlier today had me thinking what could replace it. This is a clear, promising possibility. What announcement? Are they planning to sunset something? All I could find was this blog post from the CEO, which was overly positive: https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/28/ceo-quarterly-blog-post-3-series-e-funding/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/28/ceo-quarterly-blog-pos...
      - rattray 6y ago
        Overly positive is right - it smelled like BS to me. But perhaps I'm too cynical.
factorialboy 6y ago
In comparison, the GitLab Roadmap: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/
- willow9886 6y ago
  I tend to prefer the style GitHub has gone with. Easier to quickly identify new features of interest.
  - sytse 6y ago
    If you prefer that style maybe https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-releases/ https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-releases/ is helpful.
willow9886 6y ago
Would be great to be able to "upvote" features.
- mdaniel 6y ago
  From a certain perspective, this is what the :+1: and :-1: reaction emojis are for, although I haven't checked to see if those are accessible via the issue API
  - wonderlg 6y ago
    Of course they are. The problem here is that every issue is locked so no one can react either.
jeremy_k 6y ago
Interesting to see people opening issues for things they want when nothing in the README suggests that Github was seeking community input. I realize that this is possible due to the fact that it is an open source repository, but its possible the issues could get flooded and this repository becomes less useful?
- abalaji 6y ago
  If you click on the roadmap link in the main README, you can see the issues selected for development on a GH Project Kanban board. [1] [1] https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1
sneak 6y ago
https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/114 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/114 Used to be "Drop ICE", created by @holman, one of the people who built GitHub. It's now deleted, because Microsoft doesn't want you discussing their contracts with the US military/paramilitary.
- mahmoudhossam 6y ago
  A tweet by @holman with a screenshot of the issue shortly before it was deleted https://twitter.com/holman/status/1288161910332854272 https://twitter.com/holman/status/1288161910332854272
- tomschlick 6y ago
  Because it's not a feature or legitimate bug report. Its a political statement and should be removed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SrslyJosh 6y ago
    I'd say that taking money from an organization that runs concentration camps is a bug.
    - throwaway45349 6y ago
      FFS, people who come to the US (illegally I might add) end up in a place like that because they're deliberately underfunded. That is not a concentration camp. Instead of making a rash, politically motivated decision, consider that having GitHub access (and loads of other services) removed could actually make life worse for the people there because they're less able to effectively work with so few resources.
      - eat_veggies 6y ago
        ICE's budget this year is $8800000000. Do you really think they separate families and gas their detainees with HDQ Neutral because they simply can't afford to treat immigrants like humans?
suyash 6y ago
Actual Roadmap with KanBan Board : https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Are we so sensitive to racism that the word "master" is offensive? There is a task to change the default branch to "main". Note: there is no "slave" branch. Intent matters, not the literal meaning of the word taken a specific orthogonal context. Not a single person in the millions of developers ever had a perverse notion of what master branch means.
  - fooey 6y ago
    Are we so stubbornly "anti-sensitivity" that we have to have a fight over changing a word? The word is not necessary, so why does anyone have to be offended if it's changed?
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      Not offended. The status quo = 'master'. You need to make a good reason to change it. The onus is on you to make a solid case to change the status quo. I am fine with it, it is just so far fetched that it seems unnecessary and pedantic. It would be hypocritical to target one thing but not the rest. How about also removing the word "Master" from the dictionary? We should go the full 9 yards you know. What's next? We wanna lobby MasterCard to rebrand themselves? Because everyone thinks that it is a card for the "Masters", right? Absolutely ridiculous. I also heard some noise about the Chess game and colors of the pieces.
      - bromuro 6y ago
        Take it easy - it is about time for a MasterCard rebranding :)
        fermienrico 6y ago
jborichevskiy 6y ago
Kudos to them, I want to see more of this. Another great roadmap I enjoyed reading through was the one of IPFS. Formatted somewhat differently (one long document) but still just gets me excited reading through it while communicating key objectives and milestones. https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
That's a really nice presentation. I hope that they are able to pull it off. It's ambitious, but they now have a sweet sugar daddy, and can afford it. I use GH for all my work, and look forward to seeing some of this come to be.
oefrha 6y ago
This is welcome, but anyone else feeling that GitHub is moving in the more-stuff-lower-quality direction? In particular I've wasted quite a bit of time over the past year on scarcely documented features and misfeatures around GitHub Actions. (To be clear I like GitHub Actions a lot.) One example: just yesterday I found out that public images on GitHub Packages Docker registry can't be used in GitHub Actions' jobs.<job_id>.container, since the former is gated by auth for whatever goddamn reason and the latter can only pull from public registries. Think about it, their (probably #1) container-related feature can't use their own registry. Apparently people have been complaining for almost a year now, yet nothing has changed.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  You like Github actions a lot, but also think they are lower-quality? I guess the good news is that the majority of the items on the roadmap are github actions related?
- ianwalter 6y ago
  I think more-stuff-lower-quality is kind of inevitable, but I am happy with that general direction. I have run into a lot of annoying things like and including your example. This roadmap would be better if it had a simple way to submit and vote for feature requests like other public roadmaps.
  - shankun 6y ago
    (From GitHub product team) Thanks, @ianwalter. We plan on having a public feedback repo soon - but in the meantime, if you want to submit ideas, please check out https://support.github.com/contact/feedback https://support.github.com/contact/feedback.
- olingern 6y ago
  It’s a lot better than the “Dear Github” era where nothing is released.
- rattray 6y ago
  I do wish they were holding a slightly higher quality bar on each release, yeah. My tiny example was the release of statuses. It included a pop-up to tell me it was there -- everyone knows developers find those obnoxious, just let me discover the feature myself. Plus, the feature just isn't relevant to me as someone who isn't actively participating in open source or looking for a job right now. The little animations were also slightly janky, and the button didn't feel like it was in a neat and orderly place - just sort of tacked on so that it'd be seen. My hunch is that this comes from organizationally overemphasizing shipping something splashy instead of something amazing. Is the company celebrating "discerning people find this to be uncompromisingly good" (even for small or old features) as much as "this thing was noticed by a lot of people and then this other thing was noticed by a lot of people too"? Overall I feel that under Nat, GitHub has walked this line quite well - just feels like it slips a little sometimes as a natural pendulum swing
catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
Super excited about auto-merge for PRs. "Today, the workflow for these users entails submitting pull requests and then coming back to the site to merge and delete the branch." https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107
- silviogutierrez 6y ago
  Just FYI, I've been using this for a while and it works very well: https://kodiakhq.com https://kodiakhq.com You can self host if you want, easy on Heroku. Plug and play.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  This is a great idea - I use the equivalent all the time in Gitlab. > We will add an option when submitting a pull request for review to auto-merge it if all checks pass and the pull request is mergeable into the target branch. IMO they should also make it possible to enable after creating the PR, before the checks finish. That's how Gitlab works and it's really useful even beyond the single author repo they discuss - once you have your approvals and have addressed all the feedback you can enable merge on pipeline completion and move on.
dochtman 6y ago
There was disappointingly little on the code review UX, or making the (Android, in my case) apps better.
LockAndLol 6y ago
Nothing on ForgeFed and accepting pull/merge requests from other code versioning hosts. Can't say I'm surprised.
Animats 6y ago
"Secret scanning for private repositories"[1] - Microsoft will scan your private repositories for any secret keys that can be exploited. Then those will probably be shown to some low-paid outsourced workers who will resell them to attackers. [1] https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/106 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/106
staysaasy 6y ago
Kudos to Github for trying this. I'm excited to see more SaaS companies "call their shots" and provide insight into their roadmap plans. It seems like a natural evolution of the industry. For any enterprise SaaS businesses trying this at home – keep in mind that any product information that you publish publicly can and likely will be used against you by a competitor in a sales cycle at some point, fairly or unfairly. This might still be worth it overall, but is a real risk that isn't obvious until it happens to you (or you observe your team doing it to someone else).
gigatexal 6y ago
whoever or whatever team came up with the personal README's for ones github profile needs to be given the keys to all of Github because no feature in all of my years of using github has had such a profound "cool" factor than this. It will also go a long way to solidify the site as a social network. I see it replacing my resume, I will just send people that link, much like I used to with a personal website. The roadmap is nice and it's nice that we might get to see what is going on or coming up and maybe have a say in it. This seems a lot like what Gitlab is doing though, so perhaps they're trying to get some of Gitlab's goodwill?
lcfcjs2 6y ago
They could start by making it a goal to be up all week.
verroq 6y ago
Glad to know they are working on this idiotic stuff: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63
gokhan 6y ago
It's a longtime practice of Azure DevOps (former TFS) team [1][2] and many from that team are now working under GitHub. Maybe that's a culture transfer from MS. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/features-timeline https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/... [2] https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/recentlyupdated https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/re...
llamataboot 6y ago
Was actually hoping there would be more community features on the road map. I know I'm in the minority, but the promise of social coding is still out there waiting to be realized and more ability for open source projects to collaborate in diverse ways would be welcome. But Github discussions seems interesting!
eyeball 6y ago
When is this going to absorb / replace azure devops?
The_rationalist 6y ago
Sad to see that the biggest missing feature of github.com (and actually a simple one) is not on their roadmap, not even considered in the "future" section... https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125
- bastardoperator 6y ago
  To be fair this looks really simple to wire up using the API and a single webhook.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    Yet nobody has done a great implementation of it. There is an unofficial github.com action but e.g it doesn't allow to choose the branch name
    - bastardoperator 6y ago
      I would assume the branch name would just match the issue id?
- wonderlg 6y ago
  This is one of those backwards features I hope never gets implemented. Just open your IDE/CLI and create the branch with one git command. Look at all the steps that that issue lists. It’s ludicrous.
rasz 6y ago
I recently learned Github is internally using AWS, and not Azure, for file storage !?!?! :o for example https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip redirects to https://github-production-repository-file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaws.com/110366814/4974882?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20200728%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200728T195408Z&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=4cee8b39040095c810769cf56f2ac509b26d14cd09ae3d04b00d007b6d637492&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&actor_id=2623127&repo_id=110366814&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3Dddraw.zip&response-content-type=application%2Fx-zip-compressed https://github-production-repository-file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaw...
- hankchinaski 6y ago
  they will probably migrate at some point supposedly?
kd913 6y ago
It's 2020, the cost of an ipv4 address is more than $20 an address. Can there be some focus to include ipv6 support so that perhaps those people in the developing world who can't afford an ip address can access github and contribute? Such a mechanism would be an actual meaningful step for enabling access to poorer communities.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > It's 2020, the cost of an ipv4 address is more than $20 an address. But arbitrary layers of NAT are free, so in practice this shouldn't actually block anyone. I haven't had a globally reachable IP address for any of my computers ever, and yet here I am on the web.
  - kd913 6y ago
    It may not matter in the developed world where this cost doesn't matter because infrastructure is cheap. There are still limits to how much this can scale as a solution no? For a Country like India, surely this cost will matter especially for it's poorest citizens. The limits of this infinite scaling NAT will matter. That and the cost of an IP which I imagine will inflate much higher than $20 an address. It's 2020, why isn't this a priority on the roadmap. I think it would have a much more meaningful impact to those that need it.
- slim 6y ago
  btw, Afrinic has probably the largest pool of unused addresses.
  - rasz 6y ago
    has or had? https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scandal/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scand...
- ryanlol 6y ago
  Who are these people with no access to IPv4?
a13n 6y ago
It looks so bad... there are great tools out there that are built specifically for sharing your public roadmap with your users. Using GitHub for this is very rough on the eyes, and just bad for usability.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Honestly, do not care, at all. The fact that they're doing it I think is awesome. So many large cloud providers (cough, GCP, cough) are so loath to give any visibility into their upcoming roadmaps, and it's extremely frustrating. I totally understand priorities may change, but having a general roadmap lets me plan much more easily.
voodootrucker 6y ago
It would be nice if they would prioritize reliability over features. Their uptime has been terrible lately.
julius_set 6y ago
So are we finally getting dark mode for Github on web?...
GordonS 6y ago
Great to see a roadmap so we have an idea what's coming. A little OT, but what I'd love to see on the roadmap is rolling back the recent UI changes! Rounding every corner in sight just looks wrong; it doesn't "suit" GitHub. The accompanying layout changes also don't help. I reacted the same way during preview, and after living with it for a few weeks I still feel the same - the recent UI changes still look and feel odd, like it was little more than busywork.
mderazon 6y ago
This is very good and interesting to see. Also, now that it's public, it's interesting to see as a non-enterprise user, that many new planned features are going enterprise first For example, private GitHub pages: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77 A long requested feature for private repos is going enterprise first. Not sure why, I don't know if this is purely business decision or if it has a technical reason
adav 6y ago
Look under the "Projects" tab to see it laid out more visually.
zeckalpha 6y ago
> Existing issues are currently read-only, and we are locking conversations, as we get started. Interaction limits are also in place to ensure issues originate from GitHub. In other words: “our issue and community management functionality does not scale.”
bob1029 6y ago
I really don't need a lot of fancy stuff in order for GitHub to be valuable to me or my organization. Honestly, I did not find much of the roadmap to be compelling. For me, the core features that comprise my GH user story are: - Code - Pull Requests - Issues & Labels We also have limited use of Actions (for check builds) and heavy use of the API/Webhooks for integration with our own custom CI/CD tooling. In my opinion, the biggest place where value should be added is in these 3 areas above. Some of the simplest ideas are the most powerful. We get an incredible amount of mileage out of basics like issues & labels. If there were additional aspects to issues similar to labels that could further enhance this experience, I would be very interested. Our entire development process revolves around issues to track tasks. One of the things I've had in mind would be a way to build a markdown-defined webform template that can be used for populating highly-structured issues without requiring the user to edit a complex document each time. For example, you could have CustomerTroubleTicketTemplate.md in a .github/issue_templates/ path, and then when you go to click New Issue, a down arrow could be provided that pops a list of all defined issue templates. Selecting one would present the user with a webform (as defined in the template markdown) that collects all required fields to create that issue. The issue could be created with labels/assignments/etc as defined in the markdown document. This would likely require enhancements to GFM. Bonus points if there is some way to expose specific issue templates through public GH pages so that your customers can submit tickets against your private repositories even though they don't have direct access to your issue buckets. I think a very small step in this direction could obviate a lot of use cases people find with products like Zendesk (it would for us, anyways - we just funnel ZD tickets back into GH issues).
jeffnappi 6y ago
How about basic feature parity with GitLab? GitHub - if you're listening, _PLEASE_ implement protected tags :) https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-tags/1742 https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-tags/17...
dabbit 6y ago
Yay! Codespaces soon! Discussions too.

483 points by nicolas_ 6y ago

I love how well organized and executed this is. I love that the issues each share a common format and provide concise yet clear documentation. The concise bit here is key -- I've had trouble perusing similar, open product roadmaps from other products because of the verbosity / level of detail. Kudos to GitHub's team for doing such an excellent job in communicating and managing the roadmap. Particularly given the size or the organization -- this is no small feat.

mrmonkeyman 6y ago
Are we even looking at the same document? It communicates nothing. Worst roadmap I've ever seen.

cltsang 6y ago

Interesting that there's no mention of agile tools like Project cards, issue dependencies, etc.. I wonder if the plan to incorporate features from Azure DevOps is still on-going.

aupright 6y ago
If you're looking for agile power-ups to GitHub Issues, there's a few great options in the ecosystem. Check out ZenHub if you're looking for things like issue dependencies, epics, multi-repo boards, etc. and want to stay in GitHub. GitKraken Boards are also a great option and integrate with their Git GUI.
- spankalee 6y ago
  My team uses ZenHub extensively, but it's not that great for OSS projects IMO. The extra metadata and organization that ZenHub allows isn't visible via GitHub issues, so it's basically just for the core team. Issue dependencies should be part of the core issue tracker. And GitHub has multi-repo boards, but only for repose in the same org.
JoyrexJ9 6y ago
I believe the direction is to keep GitHub focused on where developers want to be, and not become some bloated planning tool for project managers and enterprises

flixic 6y ago

In case you are interested in Dark Mode, it's not on this roadmap.

natfriedman 6y ago
This is our first time publishing such a roadmap, and it isn't 100% complete yet. More items will fill in over time. But we needed to start the journey somewhere! Dark mode is coming. The foundational work we are doing first is to replace all our custom HTML and CSS with components that are more readily themable. This will also help us improve accessibility, and help us replace our mobile web site with a fully responsive UI.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Could you please consider open sourcing the frontend JS and CSS? Right now it's impossible to use github proper without these assets being minified and/or proprietary.
  - natfriedman 6y ago
    Yes, thank you for the input.
  - hawkoy 6y ago
    https://primer.style/ https://primer.style/ Are you looking for this?
r3trohack3r 6y ago
You can put the entire web into “dark mode”: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/ Highly recommend. Also worth changing the default background color in Firefox to avoid burning your retinas every time a page loads.
- wonderlg 6y ago
  > to avoid burning your retinas every time That kind of stuff is exactly why I’ve stopped going “dark everything.” Some apps/websites are and will forever be WHITE and, if I use dark mode plus max screen brightness (to increase contrast), I’ll be blinded every time I open/visit one. You know what doesn’t blind me? Using regular white pages with low brightness. Bonus points: my battery lasts longer.

open-paren 6y ago

More direct link to the roadmap: https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1

danicgross 6y ago

It’s one thing for a startup to do this while small. A whole other level of evolution to do it while you’re large. Imagine Apple suddenly publishing their roadmap. This type of organizational neurogenesis done as an adult is impressive. EDIT: I am in admiration of the change, regardless of opinion on the value of public roadmaps. It’s just rare to see big companies make big changes. Sign of youthful vitality and health, in my opinion.

ryanSrich 6y ago
Can you explain why? I really don’t see the draw of public roadmaps. I buy a product because it works for me now. If there are improvements I need in the future the company either implements them or they don’t. A public roadmap doesn’t improve my experience at all. In fact, I might be less likely to buy the product. This feels like it opens github up to the vocal minority to scream and yell publicly about features they want. Some of which could negatively impact other users. And github will have to succumb to the pressure of that minority.
- Solstinox 6y ago
  The only vocal minority that counts in business is the minority writing the biggest checks. They probably get access to roadmaps anyway.
  - rvnx 6y ago
    Absolutely, when you are a big enterprise customer, you get access to the roadmap of most of your partners.
  - ryanSrich 6y ago
    With Github I’m not so sure. The online mob usually gets what they want. Having said that, the overlap between those paying the most for Github and those demanding the most might be 100%.
- tnolet 6y ago
  A public roadmap functions as a communications tool and sounding board. However, it does not negate strong product leadership or moderation of course. Interestingly, my small SaaS was using GitHub projects as a public roadmap for the last 2 years already! Even at our small scale it has already proven useful for finding beta users, getting feedback etc. https://github.com/checkly/public-roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/checkly/public-roadmap/projects/1

jrochkind1 6y ago

I see a LOT of planned continuing investment in "Actions". Makes sense.

jiripospisil 6y ago

> Discussions live in your project repository, so they’re accessible where your community is already working together. Their threaded format makes it easy to start, respond to, and organize unstructured conversations. Questions can be marked as answered, so over time a community’s knowledge base grows naturally. I can imagine "GitHub Discussions" [0] cutting off a significant number of Stack Overflow questions. [0] https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104

isiahl 6y ago
If you didn't know, Discussions is already live for some repositories[1] [1] https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions
- rattray 6y ago
  This looks really cool. A sweet spot for certain kinds of questions that people abuse Issues for, but never felt right. Very important things like "what is the best practice for X" or "I have this problem but haven't yet isolated the cause, can anyone help?". This is quite some timing for me, since the StackOverflow announcement earlier today had me thinking what could replace it. This is a clear, promising possibility.
  - sah2ed 6y ago
    > This is quite some timing for me, since the StackOverflow announcement earlier today had me thinking what could replace it. This is a clear, promising possibility. What announcement? Are they planning to sunset something? All I could find was this blog post from the CEO, which was overly positive: https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/28/ceo-quarterly-blog-post-3-series-e-funding/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/07/28/ceo-quarterly-blog-pos...
    - rattray 6y ago
      Overly positive is right - it smelled like BS to me. But perhaps I'm too cynical.

factorialboy 6y ago

In comparison, the GitLab Roadmap: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/

willow9886 6y ago
I tend to prefer the style GitHub has gone with. Easier to quickly identify new features of interest.
- sytse 6y ago
  If you prefer that style maybe https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-releases/ https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-releases/ is helpful.

willow9886 6y ago

Would be great to be able to "upvote" features.

mdaniel 6y ago
From a certain perspective, this is what the :+1: and :-1: reaction emojis are for, although I haven't checked to see if those are accessible via the issue API
- wonderlg 6y ago
  Of course they are. The problem here is that every issue is locked so no one can react either.

jeremy_k 6y ago

Interesting to see people opening issues for things they want when nothing in the README suggests that Github was seeking community input. I realize that this is possible due to the fact that it is an open source repository, but its possible the issues could get flooded and this repository becomes less useful?

abalaji 6y ago
If you click on the roadmap link in the main README, you can see the issues selected for development on a GH Project Kanban board. [1] [1] https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1

sneak 6y ago

https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/114 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/114 Used to be "Drop ICE", created by @holman, one of the people who built GitHub. It's now deleted, because Microsoft doesn't want you discussing their contracts with the US military/paramilitary.

mahmoudhossam 6y ago
A tweet by @holman with a screenshot of the issue shortly before it was deleted https://twitter.com/holman/status/1288161910332854272 https://twitter.com/holman/status/1288161910332854272
tomschlick 6y ago
Because it's not a feature or legitimate bug report. Its a political statement and should be removed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SrslyJosh 6y ago
  I'd say that taking money from an organization that runs concentration camps is a bug.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    FFS, people who come to the US (illegally I might add) end up in a place like that because they're deliberately underfunded. That is not a concentration camp. Instead of making a rash, politically motivated decision, consider that having GitHub access (and loads of other services) removed could actually make life worse for the people there because they're less able to effectively work with so few resources.
    - eat_veggies 6y ago
      ICE's budget this year is $8800000000. Do you really think they separate families and gas their detainees with HDQ Neutral because they simply can't afford to treat immigrants like humans?

suyash 6y ago

Actual Roadmap with KanBan Board : https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1 https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1

fermienrico 6y ago
Are we so sensitive to racism that the word "master" is offensive? There is a task to change the default branch to "main". Note: there is no "slave" branch. Intent matters, not the literal meaning of the word taken a specific orthogonal context. Not a single person in the millions of developers ever had a perverse notion of what master branch means.
- fooey 6y ago
  Are we so stubbornly "anti-sensitivity" that we have to have a fight over changing a word? The word is not necessary, so why does anyone have to be offended if it's changed?
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Not offended. The status quo = 'master'. You need to make a good reason to change it. The onus is on you to make a solid case to change the status quo. I am fine with it, it is just so far fetched that it seems unnecessary and pedantic. It would be hypocritical to target one thing but not the rest. How about also removing the word "Master" from the dictionary? We should go the full 9 yards you know. What's next? We wanna lobby MasterCard to rebrand themselves? Because everyone thinks that it is a card for the "Masters", right? Absolutely ridiculous. I also heard some noise about the Chess game and colors of the pieces.
    - bromuro 6y ago
      Take it easy - it is about time for a MasterCard rebranding :)
      - fermienrico 6y ago

jborichevskiy 6y ago

Kudos to them, I want to see more of this. Another great roadmap I enjoyed reading through was the one of IPFS. Formatted somewhat differently (one long document) but still just gets me excited reading through it while communicating key objectives and milestones. https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

That's a really nice presentation. I hope that they are able to pull it off. It's ambitious, but they now have a sweet sugar daddy, and can afford it. I use GH for all my work, and look forward to seeing some of this come to be.

oefrha 6y ago

This is welcome, but anyone else feeling that GitHub is moving in the more-stuff-lower-quality direction? In particular I've wasted quite a bit of time over the past year on scarcely documented features and misfeatures around GitHub Actions. (To be clear I like GitHub Actions a lot.) One example: just yesterday I found out that public images on GitHub Packages Docker registry can't be used in GitHub Actions' jobs.<job_id>.container, since the former is gated by auth for whatever goddamn reason and the latter can only pull from public registries. Think about it, their (probably #1) container-related feature can't use their own registry. Apparently people have been complaining for almost a year now, yet nothing has changed.

jrochkind1 6y ago
You like Github actions a lot, but also think they are lower-quality? I guess the good news is that the majority of the items on the roadmap are github actions related?
ianwalter 6y ago
I think more-stuff-lower-quality is kind of inevitable, but I am happy with that general direction. I have run into a lot of annoying things like and including your example. This roadmap would be better if it had a simple way to submit and vote for feature requests like other public roadmaps.
- shankun 6y ago
  (From GitHub product team) Thanks, @ianwalter. We plan on having a public feedback repo soon - but in the meantime, if you want to submit ideas, please check out https://support.github.com/contact/feedback https://support.github.com/contact/feedback.
olingern 6y ago
It’s a lot better than the “Dear Github” era where nothing is released.
rattray 6y ago
I do wish they were holding a slightly higher quality bar on each release, yeah. My tiny example was the release of statuses. It included a pop-up to tell me it was there -- everyone knows developers find those obnoxious, just let me discover the feature myself. Plus, the feature just isn't relevant to me as someone who isn't actively participating in open source or looking for a job right now. The little animations were also slightly janky, and the button didn't feel like it was in a neat and orderly place - just sort of tacked on so that it'd be seen. My hunch is that this comes from organizationally overemphasizing shipping something splashy instead of something amazing. Is the company celebrating "discerning people find this to be uncompromisingly good" (even for small or old features) as much as "this thing was noticed by a lot of people and then this other thing was noticed by a lot of people too"? Overall I feel that under Nat, GitHub has walked this line quite well - just feels like it slips a little sometimes as a natural pendulum swing

catchmeifyoucan 6y ago

Super excited about auto-merge for PRs. "Today, the workflow for these users entails submitting pull requests and then coming back to the site to merge and delete the branch." https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107

silviogutierrez 6y ago
Just FYI, I've been using this for a while and it works very well: https://kodiakhq.com https://kodiakhq.com You can self host if you want, easy on Heroku. Plug and play.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
This is a great idea - I use the equivalent all the time in Gitlab. > We will add an option when submitting a pull request for review to auto-merge it if all checks pass and the pull request is mergeable into the target branch. IMO they should also make it possible to enable after creating the PR, before the checks finish. That's how Gitlab works and it's really useful even beyond the single author repo they discuss - once you have your approvals and have addressed all the feedback you can enable merge on pipeline completion and move on.

dochtman 6y ago

There was disappointingly little on the code review UX, or making the (Android, in my case) apps better.

LockAndLol 6y ago

Nothing on ForgeFed and accepting pull/merge requests from other code versioning hosts. Can't say I'm surprised.

Animats 6y ago

"Secret scanning for private repositories"[1] - Microsoft will scan your private repositories for any secret keys that can be exploited. Then those will probably be shown to some low-paid outsourced workers who will resell them to attackers. [1] https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/106 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/106

staysaasy 6y ago

Kudos to Github for trying this. I'm excited to see more SaaS companies "call their shots" and provide insight into their roadmap plans. It seems like a natural evolution of the industry. For any enterprise SaaS businesses trying this at home – keep in mind that any product information that you publish publicly can and likely will be used against you by a competitor in a sales cycle at some point, fairly or unfairly. This might still be worth it overall, but is a real risk that isn't obvious until it happens to you (or you observe your team doing it to someone else).

gigatexal 6y ago

whoever or whatever team came up with the personal README's for ones github profile needs to be given the keys to all of Github because no feature in all of my years of using github has had such a profound "cool" factor than this. It will also go a long way to solidify the site as a social network. I see it replacing my resume, I will just send people that link, much like I used to with a personal website. The roadmap is nice and it's nice that we might get to see what is going on or coming up and maybe have a say in it. This seems a lot like what Gitlab is doing though, so perhaps they're trying to get some of Gitlab's goodwill?

lcfcjs2 6y ago

They could start by making it a goal to be up all week.

verroq 6y ago

Glad to know they are working on this idiotic stuff: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63

gokhan 6y ago

It's a longtime practice of Azure DevOps (former TFS) team [1][2] and many from that team are now working under GitHub. Maybe that's a culture transfer from MS. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/features-timeline https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/... [2] https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/recentlyupdated https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/re...

llamataboot 6y ago

Was actually hoping there would be more community features on the road map. I know I'm in the minority, but the promise of social coding is still out there waiting to be realized and more ability for open source projects to collaborate in diverse ways would be welcome. But Github discussions seems interesting!

eyeball 6y ago

When is this going to absorb / replace azure devops?

The_rationalist 6y ago

Sad to see that the biggest missing feature of github.com (and actually a simple one) is not on their roadmap, not even considered in the "future" section... https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125

bastardoperator 6y ago
To be fair this looks really simple to wire up using the API and a single webhook.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  Yet nobody has done a great implementation of it. There is an unofficial github.com action but e.g it doesn't allow to choose the branch name
  - bastardoperator 6y ago
    I would assume the branch name would just match the issue id?
wonderlg 6y ago
This is one of those backwards features I hope never gets implemented. Just open your IDE/CLI and create the branch with one git command. Look at all the steps that that issue lists. It’s ludicrous.

rasz 6y ago

I recently learned Github is internally using AWS, and not Azure, for file storage !?!?! :o for example https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip redirects to https://github-production-repository-file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaws.com/110366814/4974882?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20200728%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200728T195408Z&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=4cee8b39040095c810769cf56f2ac509b26d14cd09ae3d04b00d007b6d637492&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&actor_id=2623127&repo_id=110366814&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3Dddraw.zip&response-content-type=application%2Fx-zip-compressed https://github-production-repository-file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaw...

hankchinaski 6y ago
they will probably migrate at some point supposedly?

kd913 6y ago

It's 2020, the cost of an ipv4 address is more than $20 an address. Can there be some focus to include ipv6 support so that perhaps those people in the developing world who can't afford an ip address can access github and contribute? Such a mechanism would be an actual meaningful step for enabling access to poorer communities.

ebg13 6y ago
> It's 2020, the cost of an ipv4 address is more than $20 an address. But arbitrary layers of NAT are free, so in practice this shouldn't actually block anyone. I haven't had a globally reachable IP address for any of my computers ever, and yet here I am on the web.
- kd913 6y ago
  It may not matter in the developed world where this cost doesn't matter because infrastructure is cheap. There are still limits to how much this can scale as a solution no? For a Country like India, surely this cost will matter especially for it's poorest citizens. The limits of this infinite scaling NAT will matter. That and the cost of an IP which I imagine will inflate much higher than $20 an address. It's 2020, why isn't this a priority on the roadmap. I think it would have a much more meaningful impact to those that need it.
slim 6y ago
btw, Afrinic has probably the largest pool of unused addresses.
- rasz 6y ago
  has or had? https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scandal/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scand...
ryanlol 6y ago
Who are these people with no access to IPv4?

a13n 6y ago

It looks so bad... there are great tools out there that are built specifically for sharing your public roadmap with your users. Using GitHub for this is very rough on the eyes, and just bad for usability.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Honestly, do not care, at all. The fact that they're doing it I think is awesome. So many large cloud providers (cough, GCP, cough) are so loath to give any visibility into their upcoming roadmaps, and it's extremely frustrating. I totally understand priorities may change, but having a general roadmap lets me plan much more easily.

voodootrucker 6y ago

It would be nice if they would prioritize reliability over features. Their uptime has been terrible lately.

julius_set 6y ago

So are we finally getting dark mode for Github on web?...

GordonS 6y ago

Great to see a roadmap so we have an idea what's coming. A little OT, but what I'd love to see on the roadmap is rolling back the recent UI changes! Rounding every corner in sight just looks wrong; it doesn't "suit" GitHub. The accompanying layout changes also don't help. I reacted the same way during preview, and after living with it for a few weeks I still feel the same - the recent UI changes still look and feel odd, like it was little more than busywork.

mderazon 6y ago

This is very good and interesting to see. Also, now that it's public, it's interesting to see as a non-enterprise user, that many new planned features are going enterprise first For example, private GitHub pages: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77 A long requested feature for private repos is going enterprise first. Not sure why, I don't know if this is purely business decision or if it has a technical reason

adav 6y ago

Look under the "Projects" tab to see it laid out more visually.

zeckalpha 6y ago

> Existing issues are currently read-only, and we are locking conversations, as we get started. Interaction limits are also in place to ensure issues originate from GitHub. In other words: “our issue and community management functionality does not scale.”

bob1029 6y ago

I really don't need a lot of fancy stuff in order for GitHub to be valuable to me or my organization. Honestly, I did not find much of the roadmap to be compelling. For me, the core features that comprise my GH user story are: - Code - Pull Requests - Issues & Labels We also have limited use of Actions (for check builds) and heavy use of the API/Webhooks for integration with our own custom CI/CD tooling. In my opinion, the biggest place where value should be added is in these 3 areas above. Some of the simplest ideas are the most powerful. We get an incredible amount of mileage out of basics like issues & labels. If there were additional aspects to issues similar to labels that could further enhance this experience, I would be very interested. Our entire development process revolves around issues to track tasks. One of the things I've had in mind would be a way to build a markdown-defined webform template that can be used for populating highly-structured issues without requiring the user to edit a complex document each time. For example, you could have CustomerTroubleTicketTemplate.md in a .github/issue_templates/ path, and then when you go to click New Issue, a down arrow could be provided that pops a list of all defined issue templates. Selecting one would present the user with a webform (as defined in the template markdown) that collects all required fields to create that issue. The issue could be created with labels/assignments/etc as defined in the markdown document. This would likely require enhancements to GFM. Bonus points if there is some way to expose specific issue templates through public GH pages so that your customers can submit tickets against your private repositories even though they don't have direct access to your issue buckets. I think a very small step in this direction could obviate a lot of use cases people find with products like Zendesk (it would for us, anyways - we just funnel ZD tickets back into GH issues).

jeffnappi 6y ago

How about basic feature parity with GitLab? GitHub - if you're listening, _PLEASE_ implement protected tags :) https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-tags/1742 https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-tags/17...

dabbit 6y ago

Yay! Codespaces soon! Discussions too.