GitHub Enterprise 11.10.280 Release

We’re excited to announce the latest release of GitHub Enterprise. We’ve been working hard to bring you the most recent features from GitHub.com, and we’re shipping this version with our new Commit Status API included, and much more. Along with a variety of general improvements and adjustments, this new release brings the following features from GitHub.com:

• Notifications & Stars
• HTML Notification Emails
• Friendlier Edit & Delete Actions
• Commit Status API
• Merging API

In addition, we’re also including several new Enterprise specific features:

Subversion Bridge

For quite some time GitHub.com has had full support for using subversion clients to interact with git repositories hosted there. This feature wasn’t really widely known, which resulted in a more recent blog post detailing how it can be used.

Support for this feature was not immediately available with GitHub Enterprise, but has been widely requested. We’re extremely happy to announce that this release of Enterprise now includes the full Subversion Bridge that’s available in GitHub.com! After upgrading, it can be taken advantage of immediately with no additional configuration.

New GitHub Enterprise Header Design

One of the benefits of having GitHub Enterprise is that it’s nearly identical to GitHub.com. Unfortunately, it can almost be too identical and it was possible to mix up which site you were on. With this change it will be easier to differentiate whether you’re visiting GitHub.com or your own GitHub Enterprise installation by taking a look at Enterprise’s new gorgeous header:

Log Forwarding

Now, you can centralize the logs produced by GitHub Enterprise by forwarding them to your own logging servers. We’re using rsyslog to stream application and server logs out of the appliance for your convenience – you just need to specify an endpoint that can consume forwarded syslog data (e.g., logstash and splunk):

VirtualBox Guest Additions Installer

Beginning with the 11.10.260 release, we’ve included a utility to help install VMware Tools on Enterprise installations running in VMware environments. Beginning with this release, we’re also including a utility to help install VirtualBox Guest Additions. You can get instructions on how to do this here.

New CLI Utilities

We’re also including a couple new CLI utilities to help manage the appliance:

• ghe-vm-reboot – Not all GitHub Enterprise appliance administrators have direct access to the hypervisor the VM is running on. Previously, they might have to go through a separate VM management team to perform a system reboot if that were necessary. Now this is possible by using this script.
• ghe-repo-repair – This utility will detect any repositories on-disk that may have incorrect permissions on the server. If any are detected, you can optionally correct those permissions as well.

$ ghe-repo-repair -f
 --> Checking for repositories with bad permissions...
 --> Fixing permissions for /data/repositories/gist/1.git...
 --> * Fixing ownership permissions...
 --> * Fixing directory permissions...
 --> * Fixing file permissions...
 --> Done.

Updated Admin Tools UI

The UI for the Admin Tools dashboard has been updated to be more consistent with how settings are represented in the user account settings area:

Administrative actions are now grouped more logically and have better descriptions as well.

Sticky Protocol Selection

This feature has actually been on GitHub.com for a while, but wasn’t announced on the blog. Some users prefer SSH over the now default HTTP protocol for cloning. Now the last protocol a user selected will be remembered when viewing any other repository page or creating a new repository. The instructions displayed on empty repositories for what to do next will also display the appropriate steps based on that preference.

We hope you enjoy these features as much as we do. Don’t forget that there is more information available about GitHub Enterprise at https://enterprise.github.com/.

Written by

David Calavera

@calavera