GitHub has expanded its push into the enterprise with the 2.18 release of GitHub Enterprise Server, which includes a bevy of updates intended to make administrators’ lives easier.
Mario Rodriguez, head of product for GitHub Enterprise, said the enterprise edition of GitHub is seeing triple-digit growth as large companies more aggressively embrace DevOps tools and processes that already have proven themselves to be effective when building and deploying large-scale web applications.
To make it easier for administrators of those environments accessing either an on-premises edition or software-as-a-service (SaaS) version of GitHub Enterprise Server, the latest edition enables administrators to employ an issue-transfer capability to delete an issue in one repository and move it along with its associated metadata to a new repository in a single step.
Other additions to GitHub Enterprise Server include an assignable commenters capability that allows maintainers with write access to assign an issue or pull request to anyone who has commented on it, regardless of their organization membership or repository permissions.
If an issue or pull request belongs to a milestone, the name of the milestone now also will display on the project card and in the project card details sidebar. An issue or pull request from milestones can be added or removed using the details sidebar, and project cards can be organized by milestones using the search bar.
GitHub is now also providing administrators with repository templates that allow them to own or have write access to a template repository. That capability allows anyone with access to the repository to generate a new repository with the same directory structure and files. If an administrator creates a user-owned repository, they also now will be able to watch it for updates automatically. However, forks no longer will be automatically watched, even for those granted push access.
Rodriguez said GitHub is also starting to extend the scope of its platform to address best DevSecOps processes. Expanded dependency graph support adds security alerts to projects that rely on “yarn.lock” files. Those alerts help developers stay on top of vulnerabilities that impact their dependencies, which Rodriguez said is critical because security issues these days can wipe out all the productivity gains previously made in a DevOps process.
An expanded audit logs capability allows administrators to see changes to settings for organizations and repositories, in addition to seeing when PAT and SSH are being used to access information and when there’s been a change in organization and repository membership.
In general, Rodriguez said GitHub Enterprise Server, which gets updated once a quarter, provides 95% of the GitHub repository capabilities accessed by more than 40 million developers to share code and download open source software. Enterprise IT organizations clearly want to replicate the GitHub developer experience behind a firewall to ensure no one is inadvertently accessing proprietary software that provides them with a competitive advantage. The challenge, of course, is not so much setting up the repository as much as it is defining all the DevOps processes that need to revolve around it.
— Mike Vizard
