6 ms·

Upload files to your repositories

276 points by Oompa 11y ago

petetnt 11y ago
This new feature makes it quite easy to use a GitHub repo as a generic file dump / share place.
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Which may cause the ruin of the platform.
  - jkereako 11y ago
    How so? Do you mean that source code hosted on GitHub will be diluted with useless code?
    - fiatjaf 11y ago
      Yes, and useless pictures of cats.
    - fiatjaf 11y ago
      I hope not.
whorleater 11y ago
This is actually a pretty good step. Most programmers are already using some kind of UI/command line to push to Github, but having a simple drag and drop for uploads will get those who are less technically inclined on our teams to actually use version control more. At least I really hope I can stop dealing with the "asset_1", "asset_1-2", "asset_1_USETHISONE" that some people do.
- hire_charts 11y ago
  The problem is that this kind of workflow -- where someone iterates through multiple versions of a file or folder, renaming them each time -- results from the work they are doing offline and the lack of offline version control usage. Adding a step where you drag and drop your iterations into a website might only add to the confusion, rather than actually alleviating that pain.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  > At least I really hope I can stop dealing with the "asset_1", "asset_1-2", "asset_1_USETHISONE" that some people do. My personal favourite is "asset_1_$TODAYSDATE", where $TODAYSDATE is inevitably in DDMMYY format and therefore completely useless as far as sorting is concerned...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
UncleSam 11y ago
This is awesome! I was just barely wanting to upload a file to one of my repositories, but I didn't feel like cloning it to this computer.
minimaxir 11y ago
This feature has interesting synergy with GitHub Pages, where .md files can simply be dragged-and-dropped into a folder to get published as a blog post on the web. It may be enough to remove the must-be-programmer-who-understands-git barrier to entry, anyways. EDIT: GitHub Pages still requires specific file naming for posts and YAML front matter, so it's not perfectly non-programmer friendly. It might be a good idea to write a tutorial as a blog post/screencast, though.
- melling 11y ago
  You mean .org files, right? :-) I keep notes on Github that never touch a filesystem. I do my edits from a phone or tablet. If I have a lot to write, I'll use an app then copy directly into Github. Most of my notes are personal but I started breaking them out a couple weeks ago so I could keep them in public repos. https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes Why not work directly in the version controlled cloud? Books, blogs, etc could be managed this way. No proprietary formats, no backups to worry about, and you aren't going to lose it if someone steals your device: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/francis-ford-coppola-laptop-stolen-article-1.247700 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/francis-f...
  - erelde 11y ago
    I think you are just writing markdown in .org files ^^ So the .md is technically more correct. But really the extension doesn't matter much...
    - LukeShu 11y ago
      No, he's writing in the syntax of Emacs org-mode, which GitHub also recognizes. Parts of it are similar to markdown, but parts are different. For example, `markdown inline code` vs ~org-mode inline code~, and ``` markdown code blocks ``` vs #+begin_src org-mode code blocks #+end_src And [markdown links](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) vs [[http://orgmode.org/][org-mode http://orgmode.org/][org-mode links]].
beeforpork 11y ago
Upload from the browser? O tempora o mores!
kekub 11y ago
Finally you can have all kinds of creatives using github without telling them how to use the command line or even the github desktop apps. Thank you github.
milge 11y ago
Github has needed this for awhile. I was using Cloud9 for awhile to push changes to github when all I really wanted was this feature.
tlrobinson 11y ago
To clarify, by "upload files" they mean adding and committing new files to a git repository. At first I thought there was some other way to add files to a project.
douche 11y ago
Hmm, it almost seems like the recent brouhaha lit a fire under GitHub...
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. It is good to see GitHub get new features, hopefully the competitors do as well. As long as we don't end up with another SourceForge at any point, one is enough.
  - connorshea 11y ago
    GitLab has been doing a pretty good job of releasing new features in their monthly updates. [Last month's 8.4 release](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/22/gitlab-8-4-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/22/gitlab-8-4-released/) has a few nice additions. 8.5 will release on Monday, mostly with a focus on performance improvements, and there are some big ones :) Also a new Issue sidebar design! You can see [the Changelog](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CHANGELOG https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CHANGELO...) for more information.
- emehrkay 11y ago
  I've always been impressed with how often they release new features, it actually seems like a weekly thing for GitHub. I don't think that the events of the past two weeks accelerated that process at all.
  - connorshea 11y ago
    Looking through their blog, they had a dry spell from November 16 (release of the new Repository look) to January 27 when they released the new Markdown comment editor. This is, of course, because of the holidays. Then they released the improved GitHub Importer on February 11 and now PR/Issue Templates and File Uploading yesterday and today. Prior to the repository redesign, they released Git LFS and the Integrations Directory on October 1. So they had a full month and a half between feature releases not attributable to the holidays. I definitely appreciate the work they've done in the past few months, but I also think it's disingenuous to say that the last month didn't cause them to double down on developing new features.
juandazapata 11y ago
I like how Github is taking note about the lack of innovation, and doing the right thing; but I'd like to see the blog post announcements AFTER the feature is implemented. It's like saying "Oh, you're thirsty? I'm going to give you a glass of water, but not yet, next week"
- brianclements 11y ago
  Might be a way to get unofficial feedback from the community as the news spreads and make final tweaks before they release it.
- arscan 11y ago
  The feature is definitely implemented as it has been available to me for about a half an hour. Apparently it will just take a little while to roll it out to all users.
- bhalp1 11y ago
  I would think that this sort of feature was underway well before most of the negative feedback came in. This might be the reason they announced the feature before it was live though.
- yolesaber 11y ago
  I see a file upload banner when I look at my repos. Probably A/B testing
  - jastanton 11y ago
    Probably just rolling out the features slowly is all.
- davnicwil 11y ago
  That would obviously be ideal but announcing after the feature is implemented may be too late. Opinion shifts have a lot of momentum - let's say promising a feature pushes back on that shift with force X. Announcing the feature when it's live and ready to use pushes back on that shift with force Y. Even if Y has much greater magnitude than X, it is likely much more effective to reverse that opinion shift by applying X today, than Y in a week, or two, or four, when the shift has gathered sufficient momentum that Y has no effect.
r0m4n0 11y ago
Awesome... I can think of 4 or 5 times I have been away from my laptop but still need to update a photo for a client. Glad to see this, otherwise I would have never known it had been added! Slightly brings up an interesting point. With native apps, I usually review release notes upon updating. Webapps get to release whenever they please to little notice of the end user (for better or worse). With releasing new webapp functionality, bug fixes, etc "continuously" I think some cool bits get overlooked...
- softawre 11y ago
  Trello does this well, they put up a "What's new!" banner that presumably marks a cookie or localStorage so you don't see twice. Quick summary of features and a link to a blog post or release notes.
- roblabla 11y ago
  GitHub has a pretty extensive changelog in the form of blog posts. They also put them on the github.com homepage, top right (the broadcasts). It's true that every webapps don't do that though, and that's a real shame for the "power users".
bluedino 11y ago
Wait, so you couldn't add a file via the web before? I haven't used github except for pulling the source to projects but I would expect this was feature #1.
- im_the_internet 11y ago
  Well as it's based on git, before you just had to push it via the command line.
  - ChristianBundy 11y ago
    No, there's always (read: for a long time) been a "New file" button that takes you here: https://github.com/user/repo/new/branch https://github.com/user/repo/new/branch
    - fasdfasdf2016 11y ago
      The "New file" button cannot create a new binary file. This features lets you do that.
cdnsteve 11y ago
All I want is a Wiki search.... pretty please. Wiki file uploads (images) at very minimum that aren't commited to git. The process now is to create an empty issue, drag the file over, copy the URL and paste it into the Wiki page.
- adregan 11y ago
  I'd love to be able to search in branches. Especially on projects that commit to master and have release branches when they are between releases.
  - imron 11y ago
    Well, as long as we're discussing search wish lists, I'd love case-sensitive search.
    - sdesol 11y ago
      Just an FYI, my product solves yours and your parent post wish: http://gitsense.github.io/ http://gitsense.github.io/ Search/code management metrics are done at the branch level and there will be case-sensitive searches. The indexers are already building case sensitive indexes, it's just that it hasn't been enabled. Unfortunately I can't say when the indexer will be available for private use at the moment. Edit: Forgot to mention that because the indexing is done at the branch level, searching across branches to verify what is/isn't present is pretty trivial like the following example: http://gitsense.github.io/images/gitsense-on-4.png http://gitsense.github.io/images/gitsense-on-4.png
      - imron 11y ago
        Looks interesting. I'll return the FYI and let you know it wasn't immediately obvious that there were arrows I could click on to see what else it was your product can do.
        sdesol 11y ago
dogweather 11y ago
I'd really like to know the inside details: what changes have they made to release new features quickly like this? Have they been bogged down in process? Or just lack of pressure to release improvements?
ErikRogneby 11y ago
Has anyone seen a way to disable this feature at a repo or org level? I'm not crazy about master getting treated like Dropbox.
- munificent 11y ago
  > Has anyone seen a way to disable this feature at a repo or org level? Don't hand out commit rights to people?
- wise_young_man 11y ago
  It's not exactly like Dropbox though, you still have to commit (with a message) similar to how editing a file works.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Joeboy 11y ago
Github pages is now the right way to set up a reasonably-smart-n00b-editable website, IMO.
- nilved 11y ago
  Maybe for a Hacker News n00b, but a garden variety n00b has not heard of Markdown, YAML, or, for that matter, GitHub. They're going to keep using WordPress, Tumblr and Squarespace.
  - Joeboy 11y ago
    Well, the reason I said that is that a year or so ago I set up a gh-pages website for a person who I doubt could tell you what any of those things are. She's done fine so far, except that any time an image needs uploading I have to do it on the command line.
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    And writing posts in Word.
nibs 11y ago
Fun fact: you can hack this right now by dragging and dropping a file (ie. image) into the issues submission box and then using that URL in your code to display images.
- ChristianBundy 11y ago
  I'm confused, haven't you always been able to do that? The issue submission box has always allowed image uploads.
  - flashman 11y ago
    Yeah, this has been the workaround for a while. But when you see users doing stuff like this, it's a pretty strong signal that you need to think about supporting their intention with a dedicated feature.
johnloeber 11y ago
I think this is a great step, for several reasons -- both corporate and user-facing. (1) It is true that this is more likely to turn GitHub into a generic file-dump place similar to DropBox. GitHub's infrastructure is sufficiently good to handle this, and this new addition is unlikely to disrupt the workflow of veteran users. However, since it is likely that some companies will use GitHub for file dumping, GitHub will be justified in charging companies a fee for particularly large repositories -- capitalizing on the file-dumping. I sense an alternate revenue stream coming in for GitHub. (2) I've often run into situations in which I had written a small script and wanted to quickly turn that into a GitHub repo. To do so, I'd have to go through the online interface to initialize a new repo, and then make a folder on the command line, type a few commands, etc. Though it's a very short process, I couldn't understand why I couldn't just use the online interface to type up a readme and then drag-and-drop my script into the repo. The update smooths this work experience. (3) Obviously, it'll make GitHub far more accessible to less technical users -- some users are intimidated by the Git learning curve, and this update makes them much more likely to use GitHub (and then slowly learn the ropes of using it via the command line). (4) By inviting more non-technical users as in (3), it becomes more likely that (1) succeeds.
- YPCrumble 11y ago
  [Hub](https://hub.github.com/ https://hub.github.com/) is a great little tool for simplifying (2). Initialize a local repo with `git init`, make an initial commit, and `hub create` sends it to GitHub and creates the repo for you.
- gechr 11y ago
  With regards to (1), being a file-dump place: it's worth noting that GitHub currently imposes soft (50MB) and hard (100MB) size limits per single file[1]. If you try to push a file that exceeds either of these limits from the command line, you'll receive a response from the remote server pointing you in the direction of their Large File Storage (LFS) service[2], which they charge for beyond the free 1GB storage/bandwidth per month. Out of curiosity, I just tried uploading a file larger than 100MB to test the limits via the browser and received the following error: Yowza, that’s a big file. Try again with a file smaller than 25MB. For me, this significantly limits its feasibility as an alternative to Dropbox. [1] https://help.github.com/articles/conditions-for-large-files/ https://help.github.com/articles/conditions-for-large-files/ [2] https://help.github.com/articles/billing-plans-for-git-large-file-storage/ https://help.github.com/articles/billing-plans-for-git-large...
krisdol 11y ago
Just to be clear, this appears as if it's some kind of web wrapper to `git add file.ext && git commit -m "<my message>" && git push`?
- imron 11y ago
  You'd be surprised how many people struggle with understanding and doing what you just wrote (and even in knowing that's what they need to do).
- hasenj 11y ago
  It's more like the "edit file" feature where you can edit in-place on the github web interface directly. It makes github a more complete "gui" for git. To be honest I don't feel that this is the right approach. But I'm a technical user so who knows. But it feels like github is forking off to a different direction. Probably trying to look more "inviting" to corporate users; companies where sales are determined by non-technical managerial users. I can easily imagine such types asking questions like: "I want to upload a file to my team's repo, how can I do that?". It would make it way easier for non-technical users to mess up the repo with tons of binary files, like images, movies, word documents, and excel sheets.
rwinn 11y ago
I'm a bit confused, this is a simple git add or some sort of integration with git lfs they released last year? https://git-lfs.github.com https://git-lfs.github.com
- yoavm 11y ago
  It's just a web interface to git add.
hasenj 11y ago
Why doesn't github have a proper discussion forum per project? I don't consider the "issues" a proper discussion forum. That seems to me like it would be much more valuable, specially for community projects.
- derefr 11y ago
  Presumably because discussion forums aren't anyone at Github's expertise. They're a whole product of their own.
  - hasenj 11y ago
    This argument could be made against wikis and issues and static websites (and file uploads). I think a discussion forum is integral to any open source project. People traditionally use mailing lists, which have an awful UX in my opinion. A moderately better alternative is google groups, which is basically just a nicer UI for a mailing list.
baristaGeek 11y ago
Already tried it, and I absolutely love it! It was something we were waiting for for a long time. Now GitHub is light years ahead of its competitors because of this -seemingly small, but actually important- UX change.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
As someone who makes a lot of casual edits via the web interface, I was really sad that to fix an image file once, I had to install the desktop client and clone the entire repo. This is a great change.
djadmin 11y ago
Can anyone explain what's going on here https://github.com/wardowsmcc/badass https://github.com/wardowsmcc/badass ?
soyuka 11y ago
https://twitter.com/vvoyer/status/700575291433836544 https://twitter.com/vvoyer/status/700575291433836544 this

276 points by Oompa 11y ago

petetnt 11y ago

This new feature makes it quite easy to use a GitHub repo as a generic file dump / share place.

fiatjaf 11y ago
Which may cause the ruin of the platform.
- jkereako 11y ago
  How so? Do you mean that source code hosted on GitHub will be diluted with useless code?
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    Yes, and useless pictures of cats.
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    I hope not.

whorleater 11y ago

This is actually a pretty good step. Most programmers are already using some kind of UI/command line to push to Github, but having a simple drag and drop for uploads will get those who are less technically inclined on our teams to actually use version control more. At least I really hope I can stop dealing with the "asset_1", "asset_1-2", "asset_1_USETHISONE" that some people do.

hire_charts 11y ago
The problem is that this kind of workflow -- where someone iterates through multiple versions of a file or folder, renaming them each time -- results from the work they are doing offline and the lack of offline version control usage. Adding a step where you drag and drop your iterations into a website might only add to the confusion, rather than actually alleviating that pain.
SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
> At least I really hope I can stop dealing with the "asset_1", "asset_1-2", "asset_1_USETHISONE" that some people do. My personal favourite is "asset_1_$TODAYSDATE", where $TODAYSDATE is inevitably in DDMMYY format and therefore completely useless as far as sorting is concerned...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

UncleSam 11y ago

This is awesome! I was just barely wanting to upload a file to one of my repositories, but I didn't feel like cloning it to this computer.

minimaxir 11y ago

This feature has interesting synergy with GitHub Pages, where .md files can simply be dragged-and-dropped into a folder to get published as a blog post on the web. It may be enough to remove the must-be-programmer-who-understands-git barrier to entry, anyways. EDIT: GitHub Pages still requires specific file naming for posts and YAML front matter, so it's not perfectly non-programmer friendly. It might be a good idea to write a tutorial as a blog post/screencast, though.

melling 11y ago
You mean .org files, right? :-) I keep notes on Github that never touch a filesystem. I do my edits from a phone or tablet. If I have a lot to write, I'll use an app then copy directly into Github. Most of my notes are personal but I started breaking them out a couple weeks ago so I could keep them in public repos. https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes Why not work directly in the version controlled cloud? Books, blogs, etc could be managed this way. No proprietary formats, no backups to worry about, and you aren't going to lose it if someone steals your device: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/francis-ford-coppola-laptop-stolen-article-1.247700 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/francis-f...
- erelde 11y ago
  I think you are just writing markdown in .org files ^^ So the .md is technically more correct. But really the extension doesn't matter much...
  - LukeShu 11y ago
    No, he's writing in the syntax of Emacs org-mode, which GitHub also recognizes. Parts of it are similar to markdown, but parts are different. For example, `markdown inline code` vs ~org-mode inline code~, and ``` markdown code blocks ``` vs #+begin_src org-mode code blocks #+end_src And [markdown links](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) vs [[http://orgmode.org/][org-mode http://orgmode.org/][org-mode links]].

beeforpork 11y ago

Upload from the browser? O tempora o mores!

kekub 11y ago

Finally you can have all kinds of creatives using github without telling them how to use the command line or even the github desktop apps. Thank you github.

milge 11y ago

Github has needed this for awhile. I was using Cloud9 for awhile to push changes to github when all I really wanted was this feature.

tlrobinson 11y ago

To clarify, by "upload files" they mean adding and committing new files to a git repository. At first I thought there was some other way to add files to a project.

douche 11y ago

Hmm, it almost seems like the recent brouhaha lit a fire under GitHub...

giancarlostoro 11y ago
I was thinking the same thing. It is good to see GitHub get new features, hopefully the competitors do as well. As long as we don't end up with another SourceForge at any point, one is enough.
- connorshea 11y ago
  GitLab has been doing a pretty good job of releasing new features in their monthly updates. [Last month's 8.4 release](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/22/gitlab-8-4-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/22/gitlab-8-4-released/) has a few nice additions. 8.5 will release on Monday, mostly with a focus on performance improvements, and there are some big ones :) Also a new Issue sidebar design! You can see [the Changelog](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CHANGELOG https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CHANGELO...) for more information.
emehrkay 11y ago
I've always been impressed with how often they release new features, it actually seems like a weekly thing for GitHub. I don't think that the events of the past two weeks accelerated that process at all.
- connorshea 11y ago
  Looking through their blog, they had a dry spell from November 16 (release of the new Repository look) to January 27 when they released the new Markdown comment editor. This is, of course, because of the holidays. Then they released the improved GitHub Importer on February 11 and now PR/Issue Templates and File Uploading yesterday and today. Prior to the repository redesign, they released Git LFS and the Integrations Directory on October 1. So they had a full month and a half between feature releases not attributable to the holidays. I definitely appreciate the work they've done in the past few months, but I also think it's disingenuous to say that the last month didn't cause them to double down on developing new features.

juandazapata 11y ago

I like how Github is taking note about the lack of innovation, and doing the right thing; but I'd like to see the blog post announcements AFTER the feature is implemented. It's like saying "Oh, you're thirsty? I'm going to give you a glass of water, but not yet, next week"

brianclements 11y ago
Might be a way to get unofficial feedback from the community as the news spreads and make final tweaks before they release it.
arscan 11y ago
The feature is definitely implemented as it has been available to me for about a half an hour. Apparently it will just take a little while to roll it out to all users.
bhalp1 11y ago
I would think that this sort of feature was underway well before most of the negative feedback came in. This might be the reason they announced the feature before it was live though.
yolesaber 11y ago
I see a file upload banner when I look at my repos. Probably A/B testing
- jastanton 11y ago
  Probably just rolling out the features slowly is all.
davnicwil 11y ago
That would obviously be ideal but announcing after the feature is implemented may be too late. Opinion shifts have a lot of momentum - let's say promising a feature pushes back on that shift with force X. Announcing the feature when it's live and ready to use pushes back on that shift with force Y. Even if Y has much greater magnitude than X, it is likely much more effective to reverse that opinion shift by applying X today, than Y in a week, or two, or four, when the shift has gathered sufficient momentum that Y has no effect.

r0m4n0 11y ago

Awesome... I can think of 4 or 5 times I have been away from my laptop but still need to update a photo for a client. Glad to see this, otherwise I would have never known it had been added! Slightly brings up an interesting point. With native apps, I usually review release notes upon updating. Webapps get to release whenever they please to little notice of the end user (for better or worse). With releasing new webapp functionality, bug fixes, etc "continuously" I think some cool bits get overlooked...

softawre 11y ago
Trello does this well, they put up a "What's new!" banner that presumably marks a cookie or localStorage so you don't see twice. Quick summary of features and a link to a blog post or release notes.
roblabla 11y ago
GitHub has a pretty extensive changelog in the form of blog posts. They also put them on the github.com homepage, top right (the broadcasts). It's true that every webapps don't do that though, and that's a real shame for the "power users".

bluedino 11y ago

Wait, so you couldn't add a file via the web before? I haven't used github except for pulling the source to projects but I would expect this was feature #1.

im_the_internet 11y ago
Well as it's based on git, before you just had to push it via the command line.
- ChristianBundy 11y ago
  No, there's always (read: for a long time) been a "New file" button that takes you here: https://github.com/user/repo/new/branch https://github.com/user/repo/new/branch
  - fasdfasdf2016 11y ago
    The "New file" button cannot create a new binary file. This features lets you do that.

cdnsteve 11y ago

All I want is a Wiki search.... pretty please. Wiki file uploads (images) at very minimum that aren't commited to git. The process now is to create an empty issue, drag the file over, copy the URL and paste it into the Wiki page.

adregan 11y ago
I'd love to be able to search in branches. Especially on projects that commit to master and have release branches when they are between releases.
- imron 11y ago
  Well, as long as we're discussing search wish lists, I'd love case-sensitive search.
  - sdesol 11y ago
    Just an FYI, my product solves yours and your parent post wish: http://gitsense.github.io/ http://gitsense.github.io/ Search/code management metrics are done at the branch level and there will be case-sensitive searches. The indexers are already building case sensitive indexes, it's just that it hasn't been enabled. Unfortunately I can't say when the indexer will be available for private use at the moment. Edit: Forgot to mention that because the indexing is done at the branch level, searching across branches to verify what is/isn't present is pretty trivial like the following example: http://gitsense.github.io/images/gitsense-on-4.png http://gitsense.github.io/images/gitsense-on-4.png
    - imron 11y ago
      Looks interesting. I'll return the FYI and let you know it wasn't immediately obvious that there were arrows I could click on to see what else it was your product can do.
      - sdesol 11y ago

dogweather 11y ago

I'd really like to know the inside details: what changes have they made to release new features quickly like this? Have they been bogged down in process? Or just lack of pressure to release improvements?

ErikRogneby 11y ago

Has anyone seen a way to disable this feature at a repo or org level? I'm not crazy about master getting treated like Dropbox.

munificent 11y ago
> Has anyone seen a way to disable this feature at a repo or org level? Don't hand out commit rights to people?
wise_young_man 11y ago
It's not exactly like Dropbox though, you still have to commit (with a message) similar to how editing a file works.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Joeboy 11y ago

Github pages is now the right way to set up a reasonably-smart-n00b-editable website, IMO.

nilved 11y ago
Maybe for a Hacker News n00b, but a garden variety n00b has not heard of Markdown, YAML, or, for that matter, GitHub. They're going to keep using WordPress, Tumblr and Squarespace.
- Joeboy 11y ago
  Well, the reason I said that is that a year or so ago I set up a gh-pages website for a person who I doubt could tell you what any of those things are. She's done fine so far, except that any time an image needs uploading I have to do it on the command line.
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  And writing posts in Word.

nibs 11y ago

Fun fact: you can hack this right now by dragging and dropping a file (ie. image) into the issues submission box and then using that URL in your code to display images.

ChristianBundy 11y ago
I'm confused, haven't you always been able to do that? The issue submission box has always allowed image uploads.
- flashman 11y ago
  Yeah, this has been the workaround for a while. But when you see users doing stuff like this, it's a pretty strong signal that you need to think about supporting their intention with a dedicated feature.

johnloeber 11y ago

I think this is a great step, for several reasons -- both corporate and user-facing. (1) It is true that this is more likely to turn GitHub into a generic file-dump place similar to DropBox. GitHub's infrastructure is sufficiently good to handle this, and this new addition is unlikely to disrupt the workflow of veteran users. However, since it is likely that some companies will use GitHub for file dumping, GitHub will be justified in charging companies a fee for particularly large repositories -- capitalizing on the file-dumping. I sense an alternate revenue stream coming in for GitHub. (2) I've often run into situations in which I had written a small script and wanted to quickly turn that into a GitHub repo. To do so, I'd have to go through the online interface to initialize a new repo, and then make a folder on the command line, type a few commands, etc. Though it's a very short process, I couldn't understand why I couldn't just use the online interface to type up a readme and then drag-and-drop my script into the repo. The update smooths this work experience. (3) Obviously, it'll make GitHub far more accessible to less technical users -- some users are intimidated by the Git learning curve, and this update makes them much more likely to use GitHub (and then slowly learn the ropes of using it via the command line). (4) By inviting more non-technical users as in (3), it becomes more likely that (1) succeeds.

YPCrumble 11y ago
[Hub](https://hub.github.com/ https://hub.github.com/) is a great little tool for simplifying (2). Initialize a local repo with `git init`, make an initial commit, and `hub create` sends it to GitHub and creates the repo for you.
gechr 11y ago
With regards to (1), being a file-dump place: it's worth noting that GitHub currently imposes soft (50MB) and hard (100MB) size limits per single file[1]. If you try to push a file that exceeds either of these limits from the command line, you'll receive a response from the remote server pointing you in the direction of their Large File Storage (LFS) service[2], which they charge for beyond the free 1GB storage/bandwidth per month. Out of curiosity, I just tried uploading a file larger than 100MB to test the limits via the browser and received the following error: Yowza, that’s a big file. Try again with a file smaller than 25MB. For me, this significantly limits its feasibility as an alternative to Dropbox. [1] https://help.github.com/articles/conditions-for-large-files/ https://help.github.com/articles/conditions-for-large-files/ [2] https://help.github.com/articles/billing-plans-for-git-large-file-storage/ https://help.github.com/articles/billing-plans-for-git-large...

krisdol 11y ago

Just to be clear, this appears as if it's some kind of web wrapper to `git add file.ext && git commit -m "<my message>" && git push`?

imron 11y ago
You'd be surprised how many people struggle with understanding and doing what you just wrote (and even in knowing that's what they need to do).
hasenj 11y ago
It's more like the "edit file" feature where you can edit in-place on the github web interface directly. It makes github a more complete "gui" for git. To be honest I don't feel that this is the right approach. But I'm a technical user so who knows. But it feels like github is forking off to a different direction. Probably trying to look more "inviting" to corporate users; companies where sales are determined by non-technical managerial users. I can easily imagine such types asking questions like: "I want to upload a file to my team's repo, how can I do that?". It would make it way easier for non-technical users to mess up the repo with tons of binary files, like images, movies, word documents, and excel sheets.

rwinn 11y ago

I'm a bit confused, this is a simple git add or some sort of integration with git lfs they released last year? https://git-lfs.github.com https://git-lfs.github.com

yoavm 11y ago
It's just a web interface to git add.

hasenj 11y ago

Why doesn't github have a proper discussion forum per project? I don't consider the "issues" a proper discussion forum. That seems to me like it would be much more valuable, specially for community projects.

derefr 11y ago
Presumably because discussion forums aren't anyone at Github's expertise. They're a whole product of their own.
- hasenj 11y ago
  This argument could be made against wikis and issues and static websites (and file uploads). I think a discussion forum is integral to any open source project. People traditionally use mailing lists, which have an awful UX in my opinion. A moderately better alternative is google groups, which is basically just a nicer UI for a mailing list.

baristaGeek 11y ago

Already tried it, and I absolutely love it! It was something we were waiting for for a long time. Now GitHub is light years ahead of its competitors because of this -seemingly small, but actually important- UX change.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

As someone who makes a lot of casual edits via the web interface, I was really sad that to fix an image file once, I had to install the desktop client and clone the entire repo. This is a great change.

djadmin 11y ago

Can anyone explain what's going on here https://github.com/wardowsmcc/badass https://github.com/wardowsmcc/badass ?

soyuka 11y ago

https://twitter.com/vvoyer/status/700575291433836544 https://twitter.com/vvoyer/status/700575291433836544 this