What Got Me Excited the Week of August 22nd!

Here is what got me excited this week! There is a slight theme to this week's post, which largely centers around some of the technologies and integrations that may be covered in my next LinkedIn Learning course for my portfolio, which focuses on Continuous Delivery.

1. GitHub Packages: On June 21, 2021 GitHub packages (ghcr.io) reached general availability. If you have a GitHub account, you'll be able to publish and manage packages, like Docker containers in the registry at no additional cost. This weekend, I've done quite a bit of work integrating GHCR into a CI pipeline and have found it to be a rather smooth experience.
2. GitHub Password Policy: On August 13th, 2021 GitHub began to require a token-based authentication for Git operations, ceasing the use of passwords as credentials. The move was well telegraphed and I made the switch to SSH keys and personal access tokens earlier in the year. Thanks to their transparency and advance notice my workflow has largely been uninterrupted. For more automated workflows, like Jenkins pipelines, you'll find support for SSH keys in the Credentials and Git plugins.

3. GitHub Discussions: If you are looking for a great way to capture and share that hidden knowledge about your software project GitHub Discussions should also get you excited. The new feature recently left beta and is available to be included in your repositories hosted on GitHub, providing teams with a new way to collaborate on their projects.

4. Hibernate 5.3.22: On August 23rd, Hibernate announced the release of Hibernate ORM 5.3.22. The main feature of the release is support for Java 17, which is the next long term support release of Java coming up in September. As a long time Hibernate user, I'm excited by the health of the project and to have it available for years to come.

5. Linux Turns 30: Certainly the most excited item for the week was that Linux is celebrating its 30 year anniversary. The Open Source technology has literally changed our world and I'm proud to be a Linux Desktop user on my personal device. I hope this milestone paves the way for more use of the Linux OS and that some day my work machine will be a Mint distro!

That's what got me excited this week! What put the sparkle in your eye this week?