The introduction of Git as a source-code management system in 2005 fundamentally transformed the process of software development. Git allows developers to maintain a history of changes, or commits, to their code and revert to previous commits in seconds if something goes wrong. It makes collaboration easier by allowing branching to keep code for different features separate and seamlessly merging commits by various people.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Eric Amodio, creator of GitLens. I’m an innovator, leader, architect, and seasoned full-stack developer. I started developing GitLens way back in 2016 when I fell in love with Visual Studio Code and wanted to play with what was then newly released extension support. It all started with a simple question: could I add Git insights via CodeLens (hence GitLens) to any document? Which of course was yes, and a whole lot more.

If you’ve been building client websites for a while, you may remember a time before WordPress. A time when building websites meant creating every HTML page by hand. At some point, you probably decided that there were common features that every customer needed on their site, so you started using one customer’s website as the template for the next. Of course these days, WordPress is the underlying software for many modern websites, and there’s no need to re-invent core functionality.

If you’re writing or tracking code for a project you’ve likely heard of Version Control Systems, or VCS, also commonly referred to as source control. The primary function of a Version Control System is to host a project and track how it develops over time. With a VCS, developers can compare changes in files, track commits, propose changes, view project history, revert to old versions of the project, and more.

You groan. Perhaps not audibly, but your eyes widen and then slowly shut with dread. After a lucky streak of merging feature branches without incident, you finally hit a Git merge conflict. Unsure of where to start, you sheepishly bring up Slack and direct message a plea for help. Maybe this has been you, or maybe you’ve just seen it happen. Either way, it means spending time untangling the code by yourself, or with the sympathetic assistance of another.

At GitKraken, we know every developer wants to focus on delivering the best projects. Spending time and energy switching between tools, or struggling to keep focus when digging through code, are things we would all love to minimize. This is precisely what has driven us to introduce the unbelievable new set of features in the GitKraken v8.0 release! Download the most powerful version of GitKraken ever, for free! Download GitKraken Windows / Mac / Linux.

As part of GitKraken’s ongoing mission to make software developers and Agile DevOps teams more productive using Git, we are excited to announce today that we are bringing another Git collaboration tool into the Kraken family: Git Integration for Jira by BigBrassBand. With over 3.6 million users in 10,000 companies, Git Integration for Jira is the most popular paid Atlassian Marketplace app for integrating Git and Jira DevOps workflows.

If you want to understand the popularity of your GitHub repositories, knowing the number of stars isn’t enough. GitHub understands this, and that’s why the team released traffic insights. Anyone with push access to a repository can view these insights, which include: full clones, visitors from the past 14 days, referring sites, and popular content in the traffic graph.