GitHub becomes friendlier for developers using Windows

Have you wished for an easy way to do social coding on a Windows computer? If so, then you are in luck. As millions of people know, GitHub is a way to collaborate and share code with friends or complete strangers. GitHub which has been Mac-friendly has now embraced Windows developers by launching GitHub for Windows.

GitHub has “1.6 million registered developers and hosts nearly three million projects.” And “despite the lack of any core tools,” 50% percent of its traffic comes from Windows, co-founder Chris Wanstrath told AllThingsD. “Microsoft has participated in development of the client, offering more than 150 beta testers to try it out,” InfoWorld reported. It took such a long time to build the Windows app, according to VentureBeat, because “GitHub needed to have the right people who would want to build the app for themselves and eat their own dogfood.”

According to the GitHub blog, “GitHub for Windows is a 100% native application that will run on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and even the pre-release Windows 8. GitHub for Windows is the easiest way to manage your repositories on GitHub.com. Clone your repositories right from the app or clone directly from GitHub.com with the new Clone in Windows button.”

Before this, developers used a Git client for Windows such as msysgit, tortoisegit, or SmartGit to name but a few, but the Window GitHub “help” page states, “GitHub for Windows includes a fully functional version of msysGit – no need to install anything extra. You can pull up a PowerShell console within the context of any repository. GitHub for Windows even includes the amazing posh-git utility for your command line pleasure.”

GeekWire previously reported on Ray Ozzie, former chief software architect at Microsoft, talking about startups and praising GitHub three different times. “Development is much more of an assembly process than it ever has been in the past, because there are so many components out there.” On GitHub,” he said, “you can assemble into a working solution very, very rapidly.” To be a good developer or programmer, Ozzie said, “You have to connect yourself as a developer into the open world of development that’s happening right now. That means contributing to projects on GitHub, that means paying attention to Hacker News, Y-Combinator Hacker News, on a daily basis, and taking an active personal interest in what’s going on, who are the movers and shakers.”

If you recall, GitHub was hacked in March when a “GitHub user exploited a security vulnerability in the public key update form in order to add his public key to the rails organization. He was then able to push a new file to the project as a demonstration of this vulnerability.” Wanstrath assured AllThingsD, “that the company has security as a top priority.”

Although Linus Torvalds originally designed Git for “Linux kernel development,” and Torvalds moved Linux 3.1-RC5 on Github after the kernel.org breach, Wanstrath would not commit to GitHub for Linux yet. He told VentureBeat, “We can’t really come out on that yet with a yes or no. But if that’s something people want, if that’s a need they have, maybe.”

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