GitHub: Behind the Feature

In the beginning of 2013, we shipped a new version of Search to GitHub.com. This talk takes a peek behind the scenes to illustrate how we build features at GitHub. It's a good beginner-level look at how startups work in teams together and deploy a product to the general public.

Transcript

1. github Behind the Feature
3. Search
4. January 2013 Search
5. 4-9 months Search
6. elasticsearch Search
7. design Search
8. @jonrohan @TwP
9. @holman 
10. Planning
11. We knew search sucked
12. Start by talking about it
14. From: tim.pease@github.com Subject: Search Results If you have a spare moment, go to github.com/search. These search pages need some lovin’ in a bad, bad way.
15. Backend Two-person teams
16. Two-person teams Frontend
17. Building
18. Okay, let’s build something
19. BRANCHES
20. git checkout -b search-next BRANCHES
21. Really simple branching BRANCHES
22. Cut a branch from master BRANCHES (rarely from non-master branch)
23. Push whenever; let others help BRANCHES
24. No need for complicated forks BRANCHES
25. COMMITS
26. git commit -m “Design Search” COMMITS
27. git commit -m “:lipstick:” COMMITS
28. COMMITS
29. We don’t rebase or do any fancy merge strategies COMMITS
30. Small, incremental commits COMMITS
31. PULL REQUESTS
32. Open a Pull Request PULL REQUESTS
34. Sometimes we open pulls before code PULL REQUESTS
35. PULL REQUESTS Sometimes we open pulls after code
36. PULL REQUESTS Sometimes pulls aren’t for merging
37. 130 commits 10 contributors 2 months
38. PULL REQUESTS Let your pulls evolve
39. MENTIONS
42. MENTIONS Low-overhead way to ask for help
43. MENTIONS Non-intrusive way to ask for help
44. MENTIONS Feel good about a ship by mentioning the relevant team
45. TESTING
46. TESTING Tests are kinda critical
47. TESTING Every commit we push triggers three builds: ruby 1.8 ruby 1.9 github enterprise
48. Build notifications
49. TESTING Make it hard to ignore failures
50. Shipping
51. STAFF-SHIPPING Limit your exposure
52. STAFF-SHIPPING We have ~35 features staff-shipped
53. STAFF-SHIPPING My GitHub looks different from yours:
54. REDACTED
55. STAFF-SHIPPING Ranges from four-line config changes to entire feature redesigns
56. STAFF-SHIPPING Coworkers are the only real beta testers
57. STAFF-SHIPPING def search_enabled? current_user.staff? end master
58. STAFF-SHIPPING def search_enabled? true end ship-search
59. STAFF-SHIPPING No risky deploys; it’s already production-tested
60. STAFF-SHIPPING Search’s design was staff-shipped for two months
61. STAFF-SHIPPING Search’s backend was staff-shipped for four months
62. STAFF-SHIPPING Gist 2.0 was staff-shipped for a year
63. STAFF-SHIPPING More real-world usage means fewer surprises
64. STAFF-SHIPPING Shipping is scary; reduce surprises
65. DEPLOYMENT
66. DEPLOYMENT Deploying is scary; reduce surprises
67. DEPLOYMENT Deploying to production involves 80 servers and hundreds of Unicorn processes and magic and it’s a wonder this stuff works
68. DEPLOYMENT We want it easy enough for a designer to deploy
69. github/hubot
70. DEPLOYMENT hubot deploy github
71. DEPLOYMENT Hubot talks to an API that knows how to deploy every app
72. DEPLOYMENT hubot deploy github/ship-search
73. DEPLOYMENT Deploy a branch; rollback by deploying master
74. DEPLOYMENT hubot deploy github/master
75.  CHATOPS
76.  CHATOPS Chat’s important to us
78.  CHATOPS Search didn’t need standup meetings
79.  CHATOPS Chat is asynchronous and non-blocking
80.  CHATOPS “Chatops”
81.  CHATOPS Transparent way of handling ops
82.  CHATOPS Search deployed, check perf
83.  CHATOPS /graph me -1h substr(es-*_github.load)
84.  CHATOPS
85.  CHATOPS load on es-storage15 is higher than the other storage nodes
86.  CHATOPS let's let it go a bit- could just be due to relocating shards causing iowait
87.  CHATOPS Working over SSH is non-collaborative
88.  CHATOPS Makes it obvious what needs automation and tooling
89. Maintaining
90.  POST-SHIP
91.  POST-SHIP Keep shipping
93.  BUGS
94.  BUGS Keep fixing
96.  BUGS Don’t assume someone else will fix ‘em
97. Thanks.