6 ms·

Releases – a workflow for shipping software to end users

485 points by remi 13y ago

togasystems 13y ago
Excited for this! No more view raw and save.
- Kiro 13y ago
  Why would you ever do that instead of just download as zip or clone?
  - foca 13y ago
    For JavaScript or CSS single-file projects it's actually quite simpler to wget the one file from the Raw URL (or copy-paste the contents into a new buffer in your editor), than to clone/download the archive and then move the file from the downloaded directory and then clean up the other downloaded files. edit For example, `curl https://raw.github.com/documentcloud/backbone/master/backbone-min.js https://raw.github.com/documentcloud/backbone/master/backbon... > js/lib/backbone-min.js`
    - Kiro 13y ago
      Thanks, but why would Releases solve this?
      - foca 13y ago
        I have no idea :P But that's the case for which I use raw + save instead of download the zip / clone :)
ejdyksen 13y ago
Cool! We finally have downloads back! It looks like this fails on tag names that have a slash in them.
- jeremymcanally 13y ago
  Whoops. File a support ticket (e-mail support@github.com), please! That'd be uber helpful.
  - ejdyksen 13y ago
    Done and done. Thanks!
- wise_young_man 13y ago
  That was my first thought when I saw this. It seems even more strange they discontinued it only to revive it with changes they could have just iterated through with new features/changes like this release.
brendanobrien 13y ago
wahoo!
adamlj 13y ago
Goodbye SourceForge!
conroy 13y ago
I was a vocal critic when GitHub discontinued their downloads product earlier this year. I work on open source projects with compiled binaries. GitHub's answer to distribution had been "Use S3" which I never found satisfactory. As soon as they release an API, I'll be migrating all my projects over. EDIT: Just added my first release. Super easy. https://github.com/hawkthorne/tmx2lua/releases https://github.com/hawkthorne/tmx2lua/releases
- mh- 13y ago
  likewise. I would have never been so negative on the discontinuing of downloads if they released this prior. this looks really good.
- k3n 13y ago
  Which makes me wonder, since that wasn't all that long ago, why did they not give a teaser? Or did they, and we all missed it? Discontinuing the downloads was a big deal to a lot of people, which generated a non-trivial amount of bad press, but if they'd simply said "we have something better in the works" then I don't think anyone would've cared. Surely this wasn't dreamt up in between then and now...?
  - ics 13y ago
    Still, why would you get rid of it in the first place just because something is better on the way? IIRC their reasons for getting rid of it had to do with not being a distribution center and focusing strictly on the source code development. It probably wasn't just "dreamt up" but more likely they found new reasons why it should complement their future business model.
    - rtomayko 13y ago
      We thought the Downloads feature was doing more harm than good in its previous form. Quality-wise it just wasn't up to snuff (failed frequently, flash, lack of design). Bad experiences on the site need to be fixed or killed. No one was willing to dedicate time to fixing it because they felt their time was better spent on other things so that left killing it. The timing of the Releases feature only entered into the decision a little bit. It's hard to tell when something is going to ship at GitHub because there's no deadlines. Projects are done when they're done. The downside to this approach is that you can't rely on ship dates when making decisions like when to kill a feature something might replace.
secure 13y ago
While on the subject: does anyone know a software/service for automating software releases? I usually perform these steps manually: create a new tag, merge the “next” branch into the “master” branch, run “make dist” from a clean checkout, do a handful of sanity checks on the result, gpg-sign it, push it into a separate git repository for the website, archive the current docs in the website, update the website’s docs with the new docs, send posts to a mailing list, twitter, google+, update the changelog with a placeholder for the new version. I realize not 100% of that is reasonably automatable, but is there anything which tries to tackle this problem?
- lubos 13y ago
  By the time you would work out how to automate this process in some tool so it adapts to your requirements, you could write your own build script doing exactly all that.
- JangoSteve 13y ago
  That's actually what I set out to solve with jspkg.com, at least for JavaScript and CSS based projects. I'd say I've gotten to about 20% done toward that goal. Currently the site allows you to select a git tag from your repo and it will automatically package it up for you and keep track of downloads, archive old releases, etc.
- mrud 13y ago
  jenkins or any other of the continuous integration solutions
  - mindjiver 13y ago
    Yes, but that normally involves lots of inline-shell-scripting and connecting a wide array of plugins together. It's not exactly a stream-lined process.
    - giulianob 13y ago
      Maybe something like ansible even would make that easier.
frewsxcv 13y ago
Here's an example in action: https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/releases https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/releases
xpaulbettsx 13y ago
Here's a few examples of Releases: https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases
- DanielRibeiro 13y ago
  Link form: https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases
sandyarmstrong 13y ago
Any news on if/when an API for this is coming? Could be super useful.
- conroy 13y ago
  I'm waiting for this too.
amerine 13y ago
It would be amazing to have public Releases from a private repo.
- bluetidepro 13y ago
  +1 - I would LOVE this feature.
- gfosco 13y ago
  This, along with a separate/editable changelog (hidden commit log.) Some people manage a separate private repo, code review things over a period of weeks there, and then make a "release" by doing a single commit to the public repo with the final changes, minus any private keys/strings/etc.
- frakkingcylons 13y ago
  GitHub, if you're reading this, please add this feature!
- archagon 13y ago
  Extra-awesome if we could include a snapshot of the source code without the git repo or commits.
  - zphds 13y ago
    git archive HEAD --format=zip > release_v1.zip And then ship the code.
philipn 13y ago
Is there any way to add the release notes via a git commit? This is very nice, but it introduces further dependence on GitHub if something like that isn't possible. I suppose as long as there's API access someone could / will write an exporter, though. Anyway, great stuff either way!
- burntsushi 13y ago
  The article claims that releases are structured around git tags. A git tag can be accompanied by a message which is shown on the releases page. In that sense, it doesn't depend on Github.
  - gr2020 13y ago
    I'm not sure it's using tag annotations; I'm not seeing evidence of them. Plus, if I clone a repo with releases, then push (with tags) to a new repo, the new repo doesn't have any of the release notes.
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      Weird. I'm seeing some evidence of my tag annotations, but the first parts are cut off and I don't see a way to view all of them. Maybe they are still getting the kinks worked out...
      - dlitz 13y ago
        Hmm. I created a dummy package and allowed GitHub to create the tag for the release. It looks like it used a lightweight tag, and I don't see any evidence of any extra refs: $ git ls-remote https://github.com/dlitz/dummy 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 HEAD 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 refs/heads/master 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 refs/tags/v0.0 Pull requests, on the other hand, are stored as refs in the remote git repo: $ git ls-remote https://github.com/dlitz/pycrypto 10abfc8633bac653eda4d346fc051b2f07554dcd HEAD ... a1bfcc4a20ab0def053df75db0bb12644e55553e refs/heads/cmac-wip fd398a28e3a227a539b264a9f1e11287b904c7da refs/heads/hash-speedup-wip 10abfc8633bac653eda4d346fc051b2f07554dcd refs/heads/master 606b17789c1869597466c714134f138c51b938f5 refs/pull/1/head 7c3c142321f6aeb3e9ff502876e133d5350018e1 refs/pull/10/head 52fe776815416ce61a516ca060f93405b3cdf7cb refs/pull/10/merge 0c2bb473529795d29ad43ce0d14162d1e2c19027 refs/pull/11/head ... 00d0670bd7dca6bfb1c2dadaa76eaa364930ef78 refs/tags/v1.9a5 aae6caac7874411e311f034e3547a6412fe2f362 refs/tags/v2.0.1 40ae4256452c5cde1e714e3271af5028e96c5e1f refs/tags/v2.0.1^{} d1ee050420f9a0fdacbf7c9f98c923ddfcc2a39f refs/tags/v2.1.0 033fc936155115b3a541387804e0a94820978498 refs/tags/v2.1.0^{} 812e01736ca936124daa36d15a4159e92a43b9db refs/tags/v2.1.0alpha1 a7748d0e65fe17fbcb20f7b086536c3ccf68de43 refs/tags/v2.1.0alpha2 ...
cocoflunchy 13y ago
This sounds like the death of SourceForge. (I know, you could argue that it's already dead, and also argue that it's very much alive)
- ionforce 13y ago
  Schrödinger's source code repository?
  - wubbfindel 13y ago
    Only if no body checks to see if it is still alive (used by anyone), which in this case would kind of kill it.
jmduke 13y ago
I just had a glimpse of a wonderful future where GitHub releases a payments system, packaging options, and suddenly becomes an ideal app store ecosystem.
- cjbarber 13y ago
  With their recent $100mm round, they might be working on this already. Could lead to an interesting future of software selling/piracy, where those that will buy, buy, and those that are desperate not to can git clone make clean; make install
  - ejdyksen 13y ago
    I've already seen a number of apps in the Mac App Store that take this exact approach. Two examples off the top of my head: Textual, an IRC client [1, 2] Blink, a SIP client [3, 4]...this is pretty difficult to compile, though... ----- [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textual/id403012667 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textual/id403012667 [2] https://github.com/Codeux/Textual https://github.com/Codeux/Textual [3] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blink-lite/id431473881 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blink-lite/id431473881 [4] http://icanblink.com/download.phtml http://icanblink.com/download.phtml
    - Kerrick 13y ago
      Cyberduck, an FTP client, takes a similar (though easier) approach. You can buy it on the Mac App Store for $23.99 [0], get precompiled binaries for free on their website [1], or grab the source yourself [2]. [0]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cyberduck/id409222199 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cyberduck/id409222199 [1]: http://cyberduck.ch http://cyberduck.ch [2]: https://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser https://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        13y ago
leafo 13y ago
Excellent timing, just released a new version of MoonScript today, here it is in release form: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/releases/v0.2.4 https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/releases/v0.2.4
Spiritus 13y ago
Hmm, tried to draft a release. But after saving I'm only getting http 500 errors on the release page.
- aspir 13y ago
  Shoot an email to support@github.com with a link to your repository. A 500 isn't an intended feature :)
conductor 13y ago
GitHub, thank you for this. Also, you used to have ZIP and Tarball downloads in the past, can you please bring back the Tarball downloads?
- leif 13y ago
  The tarball releases are still there...
zachgersh 13y ago
Interesting that they launch this without API access and without adding it to the right hand nav. Sure, it's above your repo but I don't think that catches the eye enough and this is definitely meant to be a primary item users will be searching for.
pkamb 13y ago
If you offer paid downloads from a private repository, preferably with an integrated licensing system, I'll be your first customer.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
polymathist 13y ago
Well done. This will work quite well with Vincent Driessen's "A Successful Git Branching Model." http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ And with nearly all sensible git branching models for that matter.
reidrac 13y ago
Something like this was missing since they removed the uploads [1]. Basically a release bundle may not be exactly the same stuff you have in your source code repository. You may need to generate documentation, configure files, run setup.py sdist or whatever, so a release may not be exactly a snapshot of your git repo. So this is perfect. Great feature GitHub, thanks! It would be nice that tags != releases though, because I can think of scenarios where you may add a tag that is not meant to be a release (ie. security update, you may want to tag the commit with a CVE). Also it would be great if you could just link or display the changelog, CHANGES or NEWS instead of writing a text describing the release. That's for projects that already have a release procedure, but for the rest this is HUGE change because GitHub just improved their project management! I love it! [1]: https://github.com/blog/1302-goodbye-uploads https://github.com/blog/1302-goodbye-uploads
mweibel 13y ago
I like it a lot :) One question though: Will there be graphs about the number of downloads of those release files?
harrisonpowers 13y ago
What a great step for Github. I was impressed with Pages, and now they're providing what SourceForge granted the public with for so many years. Options for everyone. All without the sponsored hosting!
hrjet 13y ago
Wonderful, however the UI for upload sucks. It requires Adobe Flash to upload and since I have blocked plugins by default, even if I enable the plugin after loading the page (through Firefox's click to play), it doesn't work. GitHub, please: 1. don't make Adobe Flash necessary. 2. allow me to select a file through browser's File dialog. I don't like drag and drop.
thomas_h 13y ago
I see a problem with the current implementation: Releases are auto-generated from git tags. That means all tags you'll ever use on your repo will be auto-exposed as "release", even if the tag reads "dead_end_implementing_foo" or "before_major_rewrite". Tags are an implementors' tool, releases belong to product management. I want to be able to control my releases, so at least be able to delete auto-generated ones (without losing the git tag).

485 points by remi 13y ago

togasystems 13y ago

Excited for this! No more view raw and save.

Kiro 13y ago
Why would you ever do that instead of just download as zip or clone?
- foca 13y ago
  For JavaScript or CSS single-file projects it's actually quite simpler to wget the one file from the Raw URL (or copy-paste the contents into a new buffer in your editor), than to clone/download the archive and then move the file from the downloaded directory and then clean up the other downloaded files. edit For example, `curl https://raw.github.com/documentcloud/backbone/master/backbone-min.js https://raw.github.com/documentcloud/backbone/master/backbon... > js/lib/backbone-min.js`
  - Kiro 13y ago
    Thanks, but why would Releases solve this?
    - foca 13y ago
      I have no idea :P But that's the case for which I use raw + save instead of download the zip / clone :)

ejdyksen 13y ago

Cool! We finally have downloads back! It looks like this fails on tag names that have a slash in them.

jeremymcanally 13y ago
Whoops. File a support ticket (e-mail support@github.com), please! That'd be uber helpful.
- ejdyksen 13y ago
  Done and done. Thanks!
wise_young_man 13y ago
That was my first thought when I saw this. It seems even more strange they discontinued it only to revive it with changes they could have just iterated through with new features/changes like this release.

brendanobrien 13y ago

wahoo!

adamlj 13y ago

Goodbye SourceForge!

conroy 13y ago

I was a vocal critic when GitHub discontinued their downloads product earlier this year. I work on open source projects with compiled binaries. GitHub's answer to distribution had been "Use S3" which I never found satisfactory. As soon as they release an API, I'll be migrating all my projects over. EDIT: Just added my first release. Super easy. https://github.com/hawkthorne/tmx2lua/releases https://github.com/hawkthorne/tmx2lua/releases

mh- 13y ago
likewise. I would have never been so negative on the discontinuing of downloads if they released this prior. this looks really good.
k3n 13y ago
Which makes me wonder, since that wasn't all that long ago, why did they not give a teaser? Or did they, and we all missed it? Discontinuing the downloads was a big deal to a lot of people, which generated a non-trivial amount of bad press, but if they'd simply said "we have something better in the works" then I don't think anyone would've cared. Surely this wasn't dreamt up in between then and now...?
- ics 13y ago
  Still, why would you get rid of it in the first place just because something is better on the way? IIRC their reasons for getting rid of it had to do with not being a distribution center and focusing strictly on the source code development. It probably wasn't just "dreamt up" but more likely they found new reasons why it should complement their future business model.
  - rtomayko 13y ago
    We thought the Downloads feature was doing more harm than good in its previous form. Quality-wise it just wasn't up to snuff (failed frequently, flash, lack of design). Bad experiences on the site need to be fixed or killed. No one was willing to dedicate time to fixing it because they felt their time was better spent on other things so that left killing it. The timing of the Releases feature only entered into the decision a little bit. It's hard to tell when something is going to ship at GitHub because there's no deadlines. Projects are done when they're done. The downside to this approach is that you can't rely on ship dates when making decisions like when to kill a feature something might replace.

secure 13y ago

While on the subject: does anyone know a software/service for automating software releases? I usually perform these steps manually: create a new tag, merge the “next” branch into the “master” branch, run “make dist” from a clean checkout, do a handful of sanity checks on the result, gpg-sign it, push it into a separate git repository for the website, archive the current docs in the website, update the website’s docs with the new docs, send posts to a mailing list, twitter, google+, update the changelog with a placeholder for the new version. I realize not 100% of that is reasonably automatable, but is there anything which tries to tackle this problem?

lubos 13y ago
By the time you would work out how to automate this process in some tool so it adapts to your requirements, you could write your own build script doing exactly all that.
JangoSteve 13y ago
That's actually what I set out to solve with jspkg.com, at least for JavaScript and CSS based projects. I'd say I've gotten to about 20% done toward that goal. Currently the site allows you to select a git tag from your repo and it will automatically package it up for you and keep track of downloads, archive old releases, etc.
mrud 13y ago
jenkins or any other of the continuous integration solutions
- mindjiver 13y ago
  Yes, but that normally involves lots of inline-shell-scripting and connecting a wide array of plugins together. It's not exactly a stream-lined process.
  - giulianob 13y ago
    Maybe something like ansible even would make that easier.

frewsxcv 13y ago

Here's an example in action: https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/releases https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/releases

xpaulbettsx 13y ago

Here's a few examples of Releases: https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases

DanielRibeiro 13y ago
Link form: https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/reactiveui/reactiveui/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/github/akavache/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/splat/releases

sandyarmstrong 13y ago

Any news on if/when an API for this is coming? Could be super useful.

conroy 13y ago
I'm waiting for this too.

amerine 13y ago

It would be amazing to have public Releases from a private repo.

bluetidepro 13y ago
+1 - I would LOVE this feature.
gfosco 13y ago
This, along with a separate/editable changelog (hidden commit log.) Some people manage a separate private repo, code review things over a period of weeks there, and then make a "release" by doing a single commit to the public repo with the final changes, minus any private keys/strings/etc.
frakkingcylons 13y ago
GitHub, if you're reading this, please add this feature!
archagon 13y ago
Extra-awesome if we could include a snapshot of the source code without the git repo or commits.
- zphds 13y ago
  git archive HEAD --format=zip > release_v1.zip And then ship the code.

philipn 13y ago

Is there any way to add the release notes via a git commit? This is very nice, but it introduces further dependence on GitHub if something like that isn't possible. I suppose as long as there's API access someone could / will write an exporter, though. Anyway, great stuff either way!

burntsushi 13y ago
The article claims that releases are structured around git tags. A git tag can be accompanied by a message which is shown on the releases page. In that sense, it doesn't depend on Github.
- gr2020 13y ago
  I'm not sure it's using tag annotations; I'm not seeing evidence of them. Plus, if I clone a repo with releases, then push (with tags) to a new repo, the new repo doesn't have any of the release notes.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    Weird. I'm seeing some evidence of my tag annotations, but the first parts are cut off and I don't see a way to view all of them. Maybe they are still getting the kinks worked out...
    - dlitz 13y ago
      Hmm. I created a dummy package and allowed GitHub to create the tag for the release. It looks like it used a lightweight tag, and I don't see any evidence of any extra refs: $ git ls-remote https://github.com/dlitz/dummy 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 HEAD 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 refs/heads/master 23ed6e532fb4a3eb1403e0091885ccdb9f09b577 refs/tags/v0.0 Pull requests, on the other hand, are stored as refs in the remote git repo: $ git ls-remote https://github.com/dlitz/pycrypto 10abfc8633bac653eda4d346fc051b2f07554dcd HEAD ... a1bfcc4a20ab0def053df75db0bb12644e55553e refs/heads/cmac-wip fd398a28e3a227a539b264a9f1e11287b904c7da refs/heads/hash-speedup-wip 10abfc8633bac653eda4d346fc051b2f07554dcd refs/heads/master 606b17789c1869597466c714134f138c51b938f5 refs/pull/1/head 7c3c142321f6aeb3e9ff502876e133d5350018e1 refs/pull/10/head 52fe776815416ce61a516ca060f93405b3cdf7cb refs/pull/10/merge 0c2bb473529795d29ad43ce0d14162d1e2c19027 refs/pull/11/head ... 00d0670bd7dca6bfb1c2dadaa76eaa364930ef78 refs/tags/v1.9a5 aae6caac7874411e311f034e3547a6412fe2f362 refs/tags/v2.0.1 40ae4256452c5cde1e714e3271af5028e96c5e1f refs/tags/v2.0.1^{} d1ee050420f9a0fdacbf7c9f98c923ddfcc2a39f refs/tags/v2.1.0 033fc936155115b3a541387804e0a94820978498 refs/tags/v2.1.0^{} 812e01736ca936124daa36d15a4159e92a43b9db refs/tags/v2.1.0alpha1 a7748d0e65fe17fbcb20f7b086536c3ccf68de43 refs/tags/v2.1.0alpha2 ...

cocoflunchy 13y ago

This sounds like the death of SourceForge. (I know, you could argue that it's already dead, and also argue that it's very much alive)

ionforce 13y ago
Schrödinger's source code repository?
- wubbfindel 13y ago
  Only if no body checks to see if it is still alive (used by anyone), which in this case would kind of kill it.

jmduke 13y ago

I just had a glimpse of a wonderful future where GitHub releases a payments system, packaging options, and suddenly becomes an ideal app store ecosystem.

cjbarber 13y ago
With their recent $100mm round, they might be working on this already. Could lead to an interesting future of software selling/piracy, where those that will buy, buy, and those that are desperate not to can git clone make clean; make install
- ejdyksen 13y ago
  I've already seen a number of apps in the Mac App Store that take this exact approach. Two examples off the top of my head: Textual, an IRC client [1, 2] Blink, a SIP client [3, 4]...this is pretty difficult to compile, though... ----- [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textual/id403012667 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textual/id403012667 [2] https://github.com/Codeux/Textual https://github.com/Codeux/Textual [3] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blink-lite/id431473881 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blink-lite/id431473881 [4] http://icanblink.com/download.phtml http://icanblink.com/download.phtml
  - Kerrick 13y ago
    Cyberduck, an FTP client, takes a similar (though easier) approach. You can buy it on the Mac App Store for $23.99 [0], get precompiled binaries for free on their website [1], or grab the source yourself [2]. [0]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cyberduck/id409222199 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cyberduck/id409222199 [1]: http://cyberduck.ch http://cyberduck.ch [2]: https://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser https://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - 13y ago

leafo 13y ago

Excellent timing, just released a new version of MoonScript today, here it is in release form: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/releases/v0.2.4 https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/releases/v0.2.4

Spiritus 13y ago

Hmm, tried to draft a release. But after saving I'm only getting http 500 errors on the release page.

aspir 13y ago
Shoot an email to support@github.com with a link to your repository. A 500 isn't an intended feature :)

conductor 13y ago

GitHub, thank you for this. Also, you used to have ZIP and Tarball downloads in the past, can you please bring back the Tarball downloads?

leif 13y ago
The tarball releases are still there...

zachgersh 13y ago

Interesting that they launch this without API access and without adding it to the right hand nav. Sure, it's above your repo but I don't think that catches the eye enough and this is definitely meant to be a primary item users will be searching for.

pkamb 13y ago

If you offer paid downloads from a private repository, preferably with an integrated licensing system, I'll be your first customer.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

polymathist 13y ago

Well done. This will work quite well with Vincent Driessen's "A Successful Git Branching Model." http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ And with nearly all sensible git branching models for that matter.

reidrac 13y ago

Something like this was missing since they removed the uploads [1]. Basically a release bundle may not be exactly the same stuff you have in your source code repository. You may need to generate documentation, configure files, run setup.py sdist or whatever, so a release may not be exactly a snapshot of your git repo. So this is perfect. Great feature GitHub, thanks! It would be nice that tags != releases though, because I can think of scenarios where you may add a tag that is not meant to be a release (ie. security update, you may want to tag the commit with a CVE). Also it would be great if you could just link or display the changelog, CHANGES or NEWS instead of writing a text describing the release. That's for projects that already have a release procedure, but for the rest this is HUGE change because GitHub just improved their project management! I love it! [1]: https://github.com/blog/1302-goodbye-uploads https://github.com/blog/1302-goodbye-uploads

mweibel 13y ago

I like it a lot :) One question though: Will there be graphs about the number of downloads of those release files?

harrisonpowers 13y ago

What a great step for Github. I was impressed with Pages, and now they're providing what SourceForge granted the public with for so many years. Options for everyone. All without the sponsored hosting!

hrjet 13y ago

Wonderful, however the UI for upload sucks. It requires Adobe Flash to upload and since I have blocked plugins by default, even if I enable the plugin after loading the page (through Firefox's click to play), it doesn't work. GitHub, please: 1. don't make Adobe Flash necessary. 2. allow me to select a file through browser's File dialog. I don't like drag and drop.

thomas_h 13y ago

I see a problem with the current implementation: Releases are auto-generated from git tags. That means all tags you'll ever use on your repo will be auto-exposed as "release", even if the tag reads "dead_end_implementing_foo" or "before_major_rewrite". Tags are an implementors' tool, releases belong to product management. I want to be able to control my releases, so at least be able to delete auto-generated ones (without losing the git tag).