Paul Krill
Editor at Large

GitHub roadmap reveals feature plans and timelines

news
Jul 31, 20202 mins

Code scanning and Codespaces are coming soon, workflow, collaboration, and security improvements later

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GitHub has published a public roadmap, offering users a glimpse of what to expect from the popular code-sharing platform in the coming months. New capabilities in the works range from code scanning to workflow and security enhancements.

The GitHub roadmap covers a multitude of release phases, ranging from alpha to general availability, for feature areas including planning, code-to-cloud devops, collaboration, security and compliance, client applications, repos, pull requests, and gists. Timelines are included, with the first marking the current quarter of this year.

Some features noted in the GitHub roadmap include:

  • Code scanning for the cloud, with GitHub’s CodeQL semantic code analysis engine. Analysis results will be shown in the repository and pull request experiences. This improvement is slated to appear this quarter.
  • Codespaces, providing instant dev environments hosted in the cloud, leveraging Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code editor. Developers will be able to get up and running quicker, reducing time-to-first-commit. Enterprises gain secure, cloud-hosted environments to maintain code in the cloud. Codespaces are due to be generally availability in the fourth quarter of 2020.
  • GitHub Actions on GitHub Private Instances, due in the first quarter of 2021, bring GitHub workflow capabilities to GitHub Private Instances.
  • Dependabot security updates, due in the first quarter of 2021, promise to keep projects secure by opening pull requests that update dependencies to a non-vulnerable version. This extends the security updates to Enterprise Server.
  • GitHub Enterprise Server support for Google Cloud Storage, in which Google Cloud can be a blob storage provider for Actions on Enterprise Server. This feature is listed as a future capability with no target date yet cited.
  • PHP dependency management support for GitHub Packages, via the Composer PHP dependency manager. GitHub Packages users will be able to publish public and private packages within their organizations. This capability is slated as a future improvement, with no date for delivery yet.
Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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