GitHub is a web-based hosting platform for version control and collaboration on software projects. It is a service provided by GitHub, Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft.

GitHub allows developers to store and manage their code repositories (repos) online, and to use Git, a version control system, to track changes to their code and collaborate with other developers. It provides a web interface for browsing and interacting with code repositories, as well as tools for managing and organizing projects, and for communication and collaboration with other team members.

Working with GitHub in Codesphere

Our integration allows you to create a workspace from a GitHub repository in just a few clicks. To use it you need to grant Codesphere access to your GitHub account. You can grant access to all repositories of an organization or only to specific repositories.

To trigger the access request click on + New workspace and then on Grant access. This will open a GitHub page, sign in if you haven't already, select the organization, and configure which repositories you want to use.

Once this access has been granted you will be able to create and launch new workspaces from your repository in less than 10 seconds.

To pull changes from your repository, open the workspace, click the + icon to open a terminal and type git pull. You can perform any of the usual git commands here as well (i.e. switching remote branches, rolling back etc.). If your repository is private you will need to use a personal access token to authenticate (see GitHub Documentation if you need to set one up first).

Preview Deployments with GitHub Actions

With Preview Deployments you can preview changes you made to your application in a live environment before merging anything to production. Once set up any changes pushed to your repositories' pull requests will automatically be deployed to a Codesphere workspace. Read this doc to find out more.