You can test the new possibilities of GitHub issues now. (Photo: Casimiro PT / Shutterstock)
GitHub Issues is an integrated tracking tool that every GitHub repository has by default. The issues feature allows ideas, progress, suggestions and bugs to be shared and tracked within the version management platform. Now the Microsoft subsidiary has released some exciting updates that turn the issues feature into a project management board.
Plan and coordinate where the code is
In a new, more flexible environment, development teams will in future be able to filter, sort and flexibly arrange issues and so-called pull requests in the project board or table view without having to leave version management. The tool, equipped with new features, should be usable like a project management tool: Using user-defined fields on the board or in the table, sprints and features can be planned and tracked and new features and releases managed. Similar to a project management board, task lists can be used in the individual issues with the update, via which an issue can be divided into several small tasks. In the new beta, users can react with emojis, attach and illustrate issues with attachments and videos, add milestones and labels, assign tasks, and track relationships and dependencies.
(Image: GitHub)
In order to be able to use the issues feature across projects and to make the board usable for non-developers within a team, who may not always know – and do not necessarily have to know – to which repo you should best assign an issue, a comprehensive repo can be created for the project board if necessary, where issues can be created and then assigned to the respective repo. Via the new issues user interface, issues from different projects can be listed, tracked and prioritized in this way. According to commentators on the social news platform Hacker News, this already seems to be working quite well.
Whether the new GitHub issues will really be able to claim as a replacement for long-established ticketing systems like Jira, remains to be seen. Developers can already test the new features in the recently available beta.
