The GitHub ecosystem

GitHub is built around the decentralized git version control system (VCS), which has played a significant role in transforming the way in which software is developed. But GitHub is more than just hosting of git repositories – it has evolved into a holistic DevOps platform with capabilities in the following areas:

• Collaborative coding
• Planning and tracking
• Workflows and CI/CD
• Developer productivity
• Client applications
• Security

From the very beginning, GitHub has prioritized a developer-centric approach, resulting in a platform that places utmost importance on webhooks and APIs. Developers can leverage either the REST or the GraphQL API to manipulate all aspects of the GitHub platform. In addition to that, developers can use GitHub as an identity provider (IdP) to access their applications. This approach facilitates seamless integration with other tools and platforms, making GitHub what it is today: the place where the world builds software.

To understand the power of GitHub Actions, one must take into account that you can use it to automate all kinds of tasks in the entire ecosystem – not just code. This includes the following:

• Planning and tracking: GitHub offers issues and milestones, GitHub Discussions, and GitHub Projects for planning and tracking. It also integrates seamlessly with other popular planning and tracking solutions such as Jira, Trello, or Azure Boards.
• Client applications: GitHub provides Visual Studio Code as a code editor that can be accessed directly in the browser (https://github.dev), mobile applications for both iOS and Android platforms, to collaborate from anywhere, a cross-platform desktop application, and has an extensible CLI available.

  It also integrates with all the common IDEs such as Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Eclipse, and with popular chat platforms such as Slack and Teams.

• Security: GitHub Advanced Security provides software supply-chain security with Dependabot, Secret Scanning, and code scanning with CodeQL. It also supports integrations with tools such as Snyk, Veracode, or Checkmarx, and it can be integrated into Microsoft’s Defender for DevOps.
• Developer productivity: GitHub offers a virtual containerized development environment – GitHub Codespaces – and GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered assistant that can help you write and understand code. GitHub also offers code search, a command palette, and other features that can further enhance developer productivity.
• Workflows and CI/CD: Beyond GitHub Actions, GitHub supports most CI/CD tools in the market. Furthermore, GitHub provides secure integration with all the major cloud providers for CI/CD workflows using Open ID Connect (OIDC). GitHub Packages provides a package registry that supports a wide range of package formats and native npm support – but all the other major package registries also integrate with GitHub.

GitHub Actions can be used to automate tasks and build solutions across the entire GitHub ecosystem (see Figure 1.1):

Figure 1.1 – The GitHub ecosystem and its integrations

In this book, I will provide practical recipes for workflows across all the major areas so that you will be able to automate all kinds of real-world development tasks.