GitHub announced a number of new features, the most important of which is “Codespaces”. This is a feature that allows users the browser, without having to do any configuration. Codespaces works like a virtual integrated development environment (IDE) in the cloud. This feature also ties in with the fact that Microsoft recently renamed Visual Studio Code Online to Visual Studio Codespaces.
Until now, users had to submit a pull request to contribute to a project. Therefore, they had to configure their device environment based on the requirements of that project. However, Codespaces gives users the ability to avoid this process. Now, all they need to do is click the code button and the site will configure the environment itself in seconds.
The purpose of this feature is to make it easier for developers who want to contribute to a project. Codespaces can be configured in any way a user wants. Additionally, users can define multiple configurations for the same project and add any plugins they may use. Codespaces is now available for free as a public beta. While GitHub says that the code editing feature in the Codespaces IDE will always be free, it is expected to soon charge users via a pay-as-you-go pricing model for builds and other tasks.
Another new feature being added is GitHub Discussions, which allows users to discuss different aspects of a project as well as suggest ideas for new features. This is also going to act as a Q&A platform, like StackOverflow, where developers can ask questions or answer others' questions to help each other.
Among the features being added to GitHub is a new security feature called “code scanning,” which can detect security flaws in users’ code. This feature is now available for free to all public projects, while a feature called “Secret Scanning,” which looks for secret API in code, is now available to all private repositories.
