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GitHub vs Jira: What are the differences?

GitHub and Jira are two popular tools used in software development. Here are the key differences between GitHub and Jira:

  1. Purpose and Focus: GitHub is primarily a code hosting and version control platform that focuses on collaborative software development. It provides features for managing source code, tracking issues, and facilitating collaboration among developers. On the other hand, Jira is a comprehensive project management tool that supports various aspects of software development, including issue tracking, project planning, task management, and team collaboration.

  2. Version Control vs Issue Tracking: GitHub is a code hosting and version control platform for collaborative software development, while Jira is a comprehensive project management tool that supports various aspects of software development, including issue tracking and team collaboration.

  3. Integration and Ecosystem: GitHub offers integrations with popular CI/CD tools, code quality analyzers, project management tools, and collaboration platforms. GitHub also supports webhook and API integrations, enabling custom integrations and automation. Jira, while it also provides integrations with external tools, has a more extensive ecosystem and supports integration with a wide range of development, testing, and deployment tools. Jira also offers extensive REST APIs for integrating with external systems and customizing workflows.

  4. User Interface and User Experience: GitHub provides a user-friendly and intuitive interface that is centered around code and collaboration. It offers a visually appealing interface for browsing code, managing repositories, and reviewing pull requests. GitHub's interface is optimized for developers and provides a smooth and efficient user experience. Jira, on the other hand, has a more comprehensive and configurable interface. It provides different views and boards for managing projects, tracking issues, and planning sprints. Jira's interface can be customized to fit the specific needs and workflows of different teams.

  5. Team Collaboration and Project Management: While GitHub offers basic project management features like issue tracking and task assignment, its primary focus is on code collaboration. Jira, on the other hand, offers advanced project management capabilities, such as agile boards, sprint planning, backlog management, and resource allocation. It supports different project management methodologies like Scrum and Kanban, making it suitable for teams that require comprehensive project management and coordination.

In summary, GitHub is more centered around code hosting, version control, and collaborative development, while Jira is a comprehensive project management tool that supports the entire software development lifecycle.

Decisions about GitHub and Jira
Weverton Timoteo

Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?

If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:

  • Pick the correct target branch
  • Make Drafts explicit
  • Name things properly
  • Ask help for tools
  • Remove the noise
  • Fetch necessary data
  • Understand Mergeability
  • Pass the message
  • Add screenshots
  • Be found in the future
  • Comment inline in your changes

Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D

What else do you review before asking for code review?

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Weverton Timoteo

Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.

SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.

As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?

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Weverton Timoteo

One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.

It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.

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Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 8 upvotes · 703.9K views

Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.

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Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!

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Jakub Olan
Node.js Software Engineer · | 4 upvotes · 314.8K views

YouTrack feels much more lightweight than Jira and additionally have all of features that Jira have, of course lacks at some analytics features, but it's more powerful at permission management and agile workflow. Additionally YouTrack have awesome integration with other JetBrains products such as incoming JetBrains Space and all other IDEs such as GoLand.

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Nazar Atamaniuk
Shared insights
on
DeployPlaceDeployPlaceGitHubGitHubGitLabGitLab

At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.

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Pros of GitHub
Pros of Jira
  • 1.8K
    Open source friendly
  • 1.5K
    Easy source control
  • 1.3K
    Nice UI
  • 1.1K
    Great for team collaboration
  • 867
    Easy setup
  • 504
    Issue tracker
  • 487
    Great community
  • 483
    Remote team collaboration
  • 449
    Great way to share
  • 442
    Pull request and features planning
  • 147
    Just works
  • 132
    Integrated in many tools
  • 122
    Free Public Repos
  • 116
    Github Gists
  • 113
    Github pages
  • 83
    Easy to find repos
  • 62
    Open source
  • 60
    Easy to find projects
  • 60
    It's free
  • 56
    Network effect
  • 49
    Extensive API
  • 43
    Organizations
  • 42
    Branching
  • 34
    Developer Profiles
  • 32
    Git Powered Wikis
  • 30
    Great for collaboration
  • 24
    It's fun
  • 23
    Clean interface and good integrations
  • 22
    Community SDK involvement
  • 20
    Learn from others source code
  • 16
    Because: Git
  • 14
    It integrates directly with Azure
  • 10
    Standard in Open Source collab
  • 10
    Newsfeed
  • 8
    Fast
  • 8
    Beautiful user experience
  • 8
    It integrates directly with Hipchat
  • 7
    Easy to discover new code libraries
  • 6
    Smooth integration
  • 6
    Integrations
  • 6
    Graphs
  • 6
    Nice API
  • 6
    It's awesome
  • 6
    Cloud SCM
  • 5
    Quick Onboarding
  • 5
    Remarkable uptime
  • 5
    CI Integration
  • 5
    Reliable
  • 5
    Hands down best online Git service available
  • 4
    Version Control
  • 4
    Unlimited Public Repos at no cost
  • 4
    Simple but powerful
  • 4
    Loved by developers
  • 4
    Free HTML hosting
  • 4
    Uses GIT
  • 4
    Security options
  • 4
    Easy to use and collaborate with others
  • 3
    Easy deployment via SSH
  • 3
    Ci
  • 3
    IAM
  • 3
    Nice to use
  • 2
    Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects
  • 2
    Beautiful
  • 2
    Self Hosted
  • 2
    Issues tracker
  • 2
    Easy source control and everything is backed up
  • 2
    Never dethroned
  • 2
    All in one development service
  • 2
    Good tools support
  • 2
    Free HTML hostings
  • 2
    IAM integration
  • 2
    Very Easy to Use
  • 2
    Easy to use
  • 2
    Leads the copycats
  • 2
    Free private repos
  • 1
    Profound
  • 1
    Dasf
  • 310
    Powerful
  • 254
    Flexible
  • 149
    Easy separation of projects
  • 113
    Run in the cloud
  • 105
    Code integration
  • 58
    Easy to use
  • 53
    Run on your own
  • 39
    Great customization
  • 39
    Easy Workflow Configuration
  • 27
    REST API
  • 12
    Great Agile Management tool
  • 7
    Integrates with virtually everything
  • 6
    Confluence
  • 6
    Complicated
  • 3
    Sentry Issues Integration
  • 2
    It's awesome

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Cons of GitHub
Cons of Jira
  • 55
    Owned by micrcosoft
  • 38
    Expensive for lone developers that want private repos
  • 15
    Relatively slow product/feature release cadence
  • 10
    API scoping could be better
  • 9
    Only 3 collaborators for private repos
  • 4
    Limited featureset for issue management
  • 3
    Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens
  • 2
    GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions
  • 1
    No multilingual interface
  • 1
    Takes a long time to commit
  • 1
    Expensive
  • 8
    Rather expensive
  • 5
    Large memory requirement
  • 2
    Slow
  • 1
    Cloud or Datacenter only

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What is GitHub?

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

What is Jira?

Jira's secret sauce is the way it simplifies the complexities of software development into manageable units of work. Jira comes out-of-the-box with everything agile teams need to ship value to customers faster.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use GitHub?
What companies use Jira?
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What tools integrate with GitHub?
What tools integrate with Jira?

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What are some alternatives to GitHub and Jira?
GitLab
GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.
Bitbucket
Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.
AWS CodeCommit
CodeCommit eliminates the need to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to securely store anything from source code to binaries, and it works seamlessly with your existing Git tools.
Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
SVN (Subversion)
Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations.
See all alternatives