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We’re excited to announce that GitHub is partnering with ORCID. You can now authenticate your ORCID account with your GitHub account, and display your ORCID iD on your public GitHub profile. ORCID provides a persistent unique digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that researchers own and control, and that distinguishes them from every other researcher.

Go to https://github.com/settings/profile to authenticate your ORCID iD.

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On December 14, 2023, GitHub Actions released v4 of the actions to upload and download artifacts. This version improves upload/download speeds by up to 98%, addresses long-standing customer feedback requests, and represents the future of artifacts in GitHub Actions.

With the introduction of v4, we will be deprecating v1 and v2 of actions/upload-artifact, actions/download-artifact, and related npm packages on June 30, 2024. We strongly encourage customers to update their workflows to begin using v4 of the artifact actions.

In order to prevent issues for customers using GitHub Connect, the tags for v1 through v2 will not be removed from the actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact project repositories. However, attempting to use a version of the actions after the announced deprecation date will result in a workflow failure. This deprecation will not impact any existing versions of GitHub Enterprise Server being used by customers.

This announcement will also be added to actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact. Please visit the documentation to learn more about storing workflow data as artifacts in Actions.

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We listened to your feedback and released new versions (v4) of actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact. While this version of the artifact actions includes up to 10x performance improvements and several new features, there are also key differences from previous versions that may require updates to your workflows.

  • Artifacts will be scoped to a job rather than a workflow. This allows the artifact to become immediately available to download from the API after being uploaded, which was not possible before.
  • Artifacts v4 is not cross-compatible with previous versions. For example, an artifact uploaded using v3 cannot be used with actions/download-artifact@v4.
  • Using upload-artifact@v4 ensures artifacts are immutable, improving performance and protecting objects from corruption, which would often happen with concurrent uploads. Artifacts should be uploaded separately and then downloaded into a single directory using the two new inputs, pattern and merge-multiple, available in download-artifact@v4. These objects can then be re-uploaded as a single artifact.
  • A single job can upload a maximum of 500 artifacts.

Customers will still be able to use v1v3 of the artifact actions. If you wish to upgrade your workflow to use v4, please carefully consider the impact the aforementioned major version changes will have on your project and any downstream dependencies.

Artifacts v4 is only available to GitHub.com customers today but we will be extending support to GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) customers in the future.

To learn more about what is included in v4, visit the actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact repositories.

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Weve released the following improvements to your homepage feed.

  1. You now have the option to include or exclude events from starred repositories, in addition to the default events from repositories you sponsor or watch.

       2. You will now see cards for when someone has forked one of your repositories.

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We’ve added a new category to the GitHub Docs, “Contributing to GitHub Docs”, filled with resources used by the GitHub Docs team, the rest of the company, and the open source community to create documentation. The articles in this category explain the processes behind producing documentation, how GitHub approaches docs, and how to write docs according to GitHub’s style and content guidelines. If you’ve ever wanted to know the processes behind producing documentation or you’re about to begin documenting your own project and want to base your processes on our approach, you can now find that information in GitHub Docs.

GitHub Docs is an open source project that everyone is welcome to contribute to. To contribute, head to our github/docs repository and browse the open issues with the “help wanted” label.

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In 3.2.8, GitHub Desktop is shipping two great community contributions of highly requested features — “Check Out a Commit” and “Double Click to Open in Your External Editor”.
Alongside that, we have a nice addition to the clone dialog where you can quickly see if a repository has been archived, as well as many accessibility enhancements.

Check Out a Commit

A big thanks to @kitswas for his work in adding the ability to check out a commit from the history tab, a much asked for feature.

Shows check out a tag commit with new context menu option

Double Click to Open in Your External Editor

We would also like to give a shout out to @digitalmaster with another highly requested feature add of being able to double click on a file to open it in your external editor, whether that is in the history or changes view.

Shows double clicking in the history view to open a file

Quickly Identify Archived Repositories when Cloning

Another great add with this release is being able to tell at a glance which repositories in your cloning dialog are archived and likely not suitable for cloning.

Clone dialog with one repo having the Archive tag added

Accessibility

GitHub Desktop is actively working to improve accessibility in support of GitHub’s mission to be a home for all developers.

In so, we have the:
– addition of aria-label and aria-expanded attributes to the diff options button – #17062
– number of pull requests found after refreshing the list screen reader announced – #17031
– ability to open the context menu for the History view items via keyboard shortcuts – #17035
– ability to navigate the “Clone a Repository” dialog list by keyboard – #16977
– checkboxes in dialogs receiving initial keyboard focus in order not to skip content – #17014
– progress state of the pull, push, fetch button announced by screen readers – #16985
– inline errors being consistently announced by screen readers – #16850
– group title and position correctly announced by screen readers in repository and branch lists – #16968
– addition of an aria-label attribute to the “pull, push, fetch” dropdown button for screen reader users – #16839
– aria role of alert applied to dialog error banners so they are announced by screen readers – #16809
– file statuses in the history view improved to be keyboard and screen reader accessible – #17192
– ability to open the file list context menu via the keyboard – #17143
– announcing of dialog titles and descriptions on macOS Ventura – #17148
– announcing of the “Overwrite Stash”, “Discard Stash”, “Delete Tag”, and “Delete Branch” confirmation dialogs as alert dialogs – #17197, #17166, #17210
– improvements of contrast in text to links – #17092
– tab panels in the branch dropdown announced by screen readers – #17172
– stash restore button description associated to the button via an aria-describedby#17204
– warnings in the rename branch dialog placed before the input for better discoverability – #17164
– errors and warnings in the “Create a New Repository” dialog are screen reader announced – #16993

Other Great Fixes

  • The remote for partial clone/fetch is recognized. Thanks @mkafrin! – #16284
  • Association of repositories using nonstandard usernames is fixed – #17024
  • The “Preferences” are renamed to “Settings” on macOS to follow platform convention – #16907
  • The addition of the Zed Preview as an external editor option – #17097. Thanks @filiptronicek
  • The addition of the Pulsar code editor as an external editor option on Windows – #17120. Thanks @confused-Techie
  • Fixing the detection of VSCodium Insider for Windows – #17078. Thanks @voidei
  • The \”Restore\” button in stashed changes is not disabled when uncommitted changes are present. – #12994. Thanks @samuelko123

Automatic updates will roll out progressively, or you can download the latest GitHub Desktop here.

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We've shipped a small fix to improve security around creation of pull requests in public repos.

Prior to this fix and under very specific conditions, a user could create a pull request in a public repo even though they did not have push access to either the base or head branch and were not a member of the repo's organization. Often these pull requests were created by mistake and quickly closed, but could still trigger unexpected GitHub Actions or other CI jobs.

This fix has no impact on the common open source workflow where a user forks a public repo, makes a change in their fork, and then proposes their change using a pull request. This fix also has no impact on pull requests already created.

We want to hear from you! Let us know if you have questions or feedback.

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If you manage your node.js dependencies with the pnpm package manager, you can now use Dependabot to keep those dependencies updated with automatic pull requests. You can easily configure this feature by adding or updating your dependabot.yml file in your repository. At this time, Dependabot will not open security alerts against pnpm dependencies.

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Secret scanning's push protection feature is now generally available for all free public repositories on GitHub.com.

You can enable push protection for any public repository on GitHub.com from your repository's "Code security and analysis" settings in the UI or REST API. If you're an organization or enterprise owner, you can also also bulk-enable secret scanning.

For your repositories that are not a part of an organization, you can bulk-enable secret scanning and push protection in your personal "Code security and analysis" settings.

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We announced two weeks ago that we are changing how you receive notifications for secret scanning alerts. From today, those changes are in effect.

What action should I take?

If you are a repository administrator, organization owner, security manager, or user with read access to secret scanning alerts:

  • Watch your repositories of interest by choosing "All activity" or "Security alerts." This helps you choose what events GitHub will notify you about.
  • In your user notification settings, you must choose "Email" in the "Watching" section. This tells GitHub how to notify you. Secret scanning only supports email notifications at this time.

If you're a commit author:

As long as you are not ignoring the repository in your watch settings, commit authors always receive notifications for new secrets that are leaked. This means you receive a notification for any secret committed after an initial historical scan has run on the repository.

Learn more

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We are changing how you receive notifications of secret scanning alerts. Previously, to receive secret scanning alert notifications, you had to watch a repository with "All activity" or "Security alerts" and enable Dependabot email alerts to receive notifications.

Beginning March 16, here are the steps you need to take to continue to receive notifications from secret scanning:

  1. (No change required) Watch repositories of interest by choosing "All activity" or "Security alerts". This help you choose what events GitHub will notify you about.
  2. (Action needed) In your user notification settings, choose "Email" in the "Watching" section. This tells GitHub how to notify you. Secret scanning only supports email notifications at this time.

watching settings

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Today's Changelog brings you roadmap markers and command line support for Projects!

📍 Markers on roadmaps

Keep track of upcoming dates in your roadmap by visualizing the due dates of your milestones, iteration durations and breaks, and additional date fields as vertical markers. Configure these from the Markers menu to display them on the view.

💻 Manage projects from the command line

Interact with projects, items, and fields from your favorite terminal with the GitHub CLI projects extension.

To install the extension in gh:

$ gh extension install github/gh-projects

Usage:

$ gh projects -h
Work with GitHub Projects. Note that the token you are using must have 'project' scope, which is not set by default. You can verify your token scope by running 'gh auth status' and add the project scope by running 'gh auth refresh -s project'.

Usage:
  projects [command]

Available Commands:
  close        Close a project
  copy         Copy a project
  create       Create a project
  delete       Delete a project
  edit         Edit a project
  field-create Create a field in a project
  field-delete Delete a field in a project
  field-list   List the fields in a project
  help         Help about any command
  item-add     Add a pull request or an issue to a project
  item-archive Archive an item in a project
  item-create  Create a draft issue item in a project
  item-delete  Delete an item from a project
  item-edit    Edit a draft issue in a project
  item-list    List the items in a project
  list         List the projects for a user or organization
  view         View a project

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for projects

Use "projects [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Share your feedback in the repository.

Learn more about extensions (and how to build your own!) in this GitHub blog.

Bug fixes and improvements

  • Implemented auto-scrolling in a board column when reordering items
  • Fixed a bug where an existing workflow couldn't be renamed
  • Fixed a clipped tooltip for the top item in a roadmap view
  • Fixed a bug where an auto-add workflow with / in the name couldn't be duplicated (Enterprise users only)
  • Added a confirmation dialog when deleting an additional auto-add workflow (Enterprise users only)

See how to use GitHub for project planning with GitHub Issues, check out what's on the roadmap, and learn more in the docs.

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You can now enable secret scanning alerts on all your personal public repositories from your account's code security and analysis settings.

As before, you can also enable secret scanning alerts on any individual public repository or on all public repositories within an organization or cloud enterprise.

Secret scanning is free on public repositories, and available as part of GitHub Advanced Security on private repositories.

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Previously, only organizations with GitHub Advanced Security could enable secret scanning's user experience on their repositories. Now, any admin of a public repository on GitHub.com can detect leaked secrets in their repositories with GitHub secret scanning.

The new secret scanning user experience complements the secret scanning partner program, which alerts over 100 service providers if their tokens are exposed in public repositories. You can read more about this change and how secret scanning can protect your contributions in our blog post.

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npm-v9

The npm CLI v9 is now generally available! As of today, running npm i -g npm will install the latest version (v9.1.1). Details on the major breaking changes, features and bug fixes of v9 can be found in our last changelog post.

A huge shout out to all of the contributors who helped make this release possible and who continue to make npm awesome.

Learn more about v9.1.1 in the release notes. You can also find references to previous releases in the project's CHANGELOG.md.

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We've added enhanced support for CITATION.cff files to GitHub. CITATION.cff files are plain text files with human- and machine-readable citation information, and with this new feature, GitHub parses this information into convenient formats such as APA and BibTeX that can be copied by others.

Under the hood, we’re using the ruby-cff RubyGem to parse the contents of the CITATION.cff file and build a citation string that is then shown in the GitHub user interface. Special thanks to the gem creators @sdruskat @jspaaks and @hainesr who worked with us to build this.

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Issues submitted to open source projects often lack important information. Markdown issue templates can help by providing text that contributors can remove and replace with their own input – but sometimes contributors can miss details or get confused.

New, YAML configured issue forms enable maintainers to build structured forms with required fields and easy-to-follow steps so that they can capture every important detail.

User submits an issue via issue forms.

Issue forms are now available in beta for all publicly accessible repositories.

Learn more about issue forms and send us your feedback.

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