GitHub's public roadmap gives devs early notice of major feature updates

The Microsoft-owned development hub GitHub has published its product roadmap for the first time in order to raise the level of engagement with its users over upcoming features.

With GitHub having released more than 200 new features over the last year, the platform has decided to open up its product roadmap so developers can plan ahead as well as offer feedback on some of the forthcoming changes.

The oadmap is a public repository on GitHub that anybody can access, with a project board laying out upcoming releases. Each item on the board links out to a more detailed issue, that sets out the details behind the feature as well as the aims, and when the company expects to deliver.

“As customers have gotten used to us shipping new things, we’ve also heard you clearly tell us that you’d like more visibility into what we’re working on, what we’re going to be shipping, and when,” said GitHub’s senior vice president for product, Shanku Niyogi.

“The public roadmap is designed to give your team more information about what features and functionality you can expect from GitHub over the coming quarters. With more transparency into what we’re building, you can also plan better and share feedback earlier to influence what we’re building.”

The project board categorises feature updates by quarter, including the third and fourth quarters of 2020, the first quarter of 2021, and the ‘future’. There are currently 56 projects set out on the roadmap at the time of writing, with many more expected to be added with time in the coming week and months.

Among the most immediate feature changes, due in the next quarter of 2020, including CodeQL integration for cloud and server environments, as well as increased API limits for GitHub and OAuth apps.

Features due a little more in the future, meanwhile, include support for GitHub Enterprise Server, auto-merging pull requests, and GitHub Discussions. This represents a new way for software communities to collaborate within a repository alongside issues and pull requests.

The board can also be filtered by labels, including ‘beta’, ‘server, and ‘security & compliance’, which can be used in combination, for example, to identify when GitHub plans on bringing code scanning and screen scanning to GitHub Enterprise Server in beta. 

The firm will continue to share product announcements at major events and in blog posts, although the public roadmap will include most aspects of GitHub’s product plans.