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CodeQL code scanning is now 16% faster

CodeQL is the engine that powers GitHub code scanning, used by more than 100,000 repositories to catch security vulnerabilities before they cause issues in deployments.

CodeQL is fully integrated into the Pull Request workflow, so it has to be as fast as possible to keep developers unblocked.

We're constantly working on performance improvements, from incremental optimizations to fundamental research, all with the goal of speeding up the nearly 150,000 checks we run every single day, without compromising our best-in-class precision and low false-positive rate.

With the recent release of CodeQL version 2.12, we looked back at the performance gains compared to version 2.11 (September 2022) to see how far we've come. We compared the analysis time for the same 55,000 repositories on GitHub.com and found an average improvement of 15.7% across all supported languages:

codeql performance 2 11 2 12 improvement

Users on GitHub.com automatically run the latest CodeQL version. Customers on GitHub Enterprise Server can update by following the sync processes explained here.

The GitHub Enterprise Server 3.8 Release Candidate is available

The GitHub Enterprise Server 3.8 release candidate is here

GitHub Enterprise Server 3.8 brings new capabilities to help companies build and deliver secure software, more quickly. With over 100 new features, here are a few highlights:

  • Projects, the adaptable and flexible tool for planning and tracking work on GitHub, is now available on Enterprise Server as a public beta. A project is an adaptable spreadsheet that integrates with your issues and pull requests on GitHub to help you plan and track your work effectively. You can create and customize multiple views by filtering, sorting, grouping your issues and pull requests, and adding custom fields to track metadata specific to your team. Rather than enforcing a specific methodology, a project provides flexible features you can customize to your team’s needs and processes.
  • GitHub Actions support organization-wide required workflows. You can define mandated workflows to run during the lifecycle of a repository’s pipeline. Individual development teams at the repository level will be able to see what required workflows have been applied to their repository, what actions that workflow performs, and whom to contact if they have questions.
  • Code scanning now supports Kotlin. We are launching a public beta for support of Kotlin. In this public beta Kotlin support will be enabled by default for all new code scanning users, and existing users that have already configured a Java analysis.
  • The Management Console now supports multiple users. Authentication in the management console is currently based on a single admin password. In version 3.8 we are introducing a multi-user concept with a user management interface to the Management Console which will allow admins to invite new users with different types of roles.

Release Candidates are a way for you to try the latest features at the earliest time, and they help us gather feedback early to ensure the release works in your environment. They should be tested on non-production environments. Here are some highlights for this release. Read more about the release candidate process.

Read more about GitHub Enterprise Server 3.8 in the release notes, or download the release candidate now. If you have any feedback or questions, please contact our Support team.

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Migration of CodeQL CLI Docs to GitHub Docs site

Following feedback from code scanning users, we've moved documentation about the CodeQL CLI from codeql.github.com to docs.github.com, the main GitHub Docs site.

You can now find the articles under the “Using the CodeQL CLI” and “CodeQL CLI reference” categories, which correspond to the categories on the original site. We’ve updated each of the original articles on codeql.github.com with links to the new location of the article and to each subsection, so that if you go to the old location you can easily find the information you need.

The source files now exist in Markdown format in the public, open-source docs repository. If you would like to contribute, you can consult and follow the steps listed in the GitHub Docs contributing guide.

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