GitHub

GitHub is a web platform that hosts repositories of the Git version control system and the world's largest service for collaborating on code. On top of the version control engine itself, it adds a suite of tools that make teamwork easier: reviewing changes, discussions, issue tracking, and automation of build and deployment processes.

What GitHub is about

Code lives in repositories, which can be public (visible to everyone, the backbone of open source) or private. Around those repositories, GitHub provides a set of features:

• Pull requests — change proposals put through code review before merging;
• Issues — a system for reporting bugs, tasks and ideas, complete with labels and milestones;
• GitHub Actions — built-in CI/CD automation that runs tests and deployments after each push;
• Access management — controlling who can reach which repositories within organisations and teams.

It is important not to confuse GitHub with Git: Git is a version control program that runs locally, while GitHub is a service that stores repositories in the cloud and layers social and management features on top of them.

Practical application

GitHub is home to millions of projects — from open-source libraries and commercial code to documentation and static sites published via GitHub Pages. Teams use it to run the entire development cycle: planning tasks, reviewing code, and running automated tests and deployments triggered by repository changes.

For many companies, a public repository on GitHub is also part of their image — it showcases code quality, project activity and openness to collaboration. The platform often serves as the starting point for GitOps workflows, in which the state of infrastructure is declared in a repository and every approved change automatically propagates to the target environment.