GitX

GitHub users who’ve already learned the repository hosting service’s ecosystem know that the platform is not exactly well-equipped when it comes to collaboration features. Of course, the basic task management tools and wikis that GitHub provides may be enough for some, but more often than now, developers usually resort to other mediums to discuss the future evolution of their GitHub projects.

GitX is an interesting and innovative Google Chrome extension that aims to change that by providing GitHub users with the ability to add private notes, comments, ideas in the Issues and pull requests pages. Please note that these notes are only visible to specific project collaborators.

In short, it helps the actual people who are in charge of the project (the actual maintainers) to the community a lot more efficiently directly within GitHub itself. It keeps all internal discussions about the project on the platform it is hosted (GitHub). This should help speed up the process greatly, especially in the case of simple tasks.

Getting started with GitX could not have been easier. For starters, you’ll need a valid GitHub account. Next, head over to the Chrome Web Store and install the GitX extension on your browser.

Once installed, the extension will require authorization which means that you will have to log in to your GitHub account and provide the tool with access to your public and private repositories, as well as your GitHub-related personal user data. Go to the GitHub Issues/Pull Requests tab, and you’ll be able to see a new “Make a note” field at the bottom of the page.

Every note can be saved and tweaked later on at any time. The extension provides you with the option of showing and hiding the notes to other collaborators. Needless to say, only users with full write access to your repositories can create the said notes.

Taking everything into account, GitX is undoubtedly a very interesting proposition. While not perfect, it does improve GitHub’s productivity set of features, making it quite valuable for users who often work on projects with multiple other collaborators.