[conroy]

I was a vocal critic when GitHub discontinued their downloads product earlier this year. I work on open source projects with compiled binaries. GitHub's answer to distribution had been "Use S3" which I never found satisfactory.

As soon as they release an API, I'll be migrating all my projects over.

EDIT: Just added my first release. Super easy. https://github.com/hawkthorne/tmx2lua/releases

[k3n]

Which makes me wonder, since that wasn't all that long ago, why did they not give a teaser? Or did they, and we all missed it?

Discontinuing the downloads was a big deal to a lot of people, which generated a non-trivial amount of bad press, but if they'd simply said "we have something better in the works" then I don't think anyone would've cared. Surely this wasn't dreamt up in between then and now...?

[rtomayko]

We don't talk about unshipped features as a rule. It's hard to do so in a way that doesn't imply promises or timeframes.

[ics]

Still, why would you get rid of it in the first place just because something is better on the way? IIRC their reasons for getting rid of it had to do with not being a distribution center and focusing strictly on the source code development. It probably wasn't just "dreamt up" but more likely they found new reasons why it should complement their future business model.

[rtomayko]

We thought the Downloads feature was doing more harm than good in its previous form. Quality-wise it just wasn't up to snuff (failed frequently, flash, lack of design). Bad experiences on the site need to be fixed or killed. No one was willing to dedicate time to fixing it because they felt their time was better spent on other things so that left killing it.

The timing of the Releases feature only entered into the decision a little bit. It's hard to tell when something is going to ship at GitHub because there's no deadlines. Projects are done when they're done. The downside to this approach is that you can't rely on ship dates when making decisions like when to kill a feature something might replace.

[atesti]

But you didn't just kill a feature, you also killed data with it!

Gladly I am not affected, I have not recently tried to download an abandoned binary for a project hosted on github and it was deleted without replacement, but I still feel sad about what might now be lost

[hrjet]

Huh? This one requires flash too AFAICT!

[hrjet]

I sought and got clarification from Github. The Flash is only for copy-to-clipboard functionality. Not related to Releases.

[mh-]

likewise. I would have never been so negative on the discontinuing of downloads if they released this prior.

this looks really good.

[fudged71]

Having the download buttons listed like that baffles me. Many downloads have similar names, and having them in a vertical list is far easier for determining which one you're supposed to get.

[ksec]

My thoughts exactly.