10 GitHub Options That You Are Lacking Out On – KDnuggets

On this weblog, we are going to discover the characteristic that retains drawing me again to GitHub, turning it into an entire ecosystem for my coding and information initiatives. Past code sharing, you may host your personal web site without cost, 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 surroundings that means that you can begin coding with out the trouble of establishing your native surroundings. It’s much like VSCode, however it runs within the cloud and means that you can sync your settings and obtain extensions shortly. Codespaces will be accessed from any machine with web entry, making it a flexible software for builders on the go. Whether or not you’re at house or touring, you may entry your challenge, work on it, and even deploy your software 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, supply immediate solutions, and generates commit messages in real-time. It considerably quickens your coding course of by offering context-aware solutions, providing a whole ecosystem of AI help that can assist 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 immediately from GitHub. You may also 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, practice my fashions, consider the outcomes, and based mostly on the outcomes, deploy the mannequin. Setting it up could be very straightforward in comparison with some native options like Jenkins.

4. GitHub Pages

With GitHub Pages, you may create and publish web sites immediately from a GitHub repository. This characteristic is ideal for internet hosting challenge documentation, blogs, resumes, and portfolios. I exploit it to deploy my Knowledge Science portfolio, my writing portfolio, and my aspect challenge web site. I’ve even arrange the area identify so that folks can simply kind abidaliawan.com and consider my web site that’s hosted fully without cost on GitHub. It solely took me just a few hours to set it up.

5. Code Assessment Assignments

I lately found this characteristic: You assign a group member to overview a pull request. The assigned individual simply critiques the adjustments and feedback on them. Ultimately, they approve the pull request to be merged. One of these code overview helps the group keep away from unhealthy code from being merged. You’ll be able to even assist your group by commenting on the adjustments made and serving to them right 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 challenge 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 numerous 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 lowering file sizes.

7. Protected Branches

Protected Branches are a useful characteristic that preserves the integrity of your code by stopping unauthorized adjustments. You’ll be able to implement guidelines equivalent to requiring pull request critiques earlier than merging, guaranteeing that solely totally reviewed code is built-in into your principal department. Moreover, you may set guidelines for any department, making it crucial for group members to comply with 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. Nevertheless, GitHub Discussions offers a devoted house on your group to return collectively, ask and reply questions, and have open-ended conversations that aren’t associated to present improvement. This characteristic fosters group engagement and generally is a useful different to Discord or Slack.

9. GitHub Discover

GitHub Discover helps you uncover new and trending initiatives, repositories, occasions, subjects, and academic sources. It offers customized suggestions based mostly in your pursuits and exercise, making discovering initiatives that align along with your abilities 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 let 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 immediately out of your terminal. You’ll be able to management your complete GitHub profile by means of the GitHub CLI software. These instruments are lifesavers for novices as they simply 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 Assessment, and the GitHub cell and desktop apps, you may rework 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 more durable.
 
 

Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is an authorized information 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 information 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 fighting psychological sickness.

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