Add Github (and GitLab) Features

[Sing-Li]

Bouncing some ideas around on how to make Rocket.Chat more userful for modern developers after release 1.0.

Got a whole bunch of Github related feature enhancements. They can also be useful for GitLab users on team servers, private Internet, and Intranets.

Now open for community review. Please drop a note to let us know if you think any of this may be useful for you or your team.

Rocket.Chat - Github / GitLab Edition

Background:

• good for distributed open source teams, pair programming, code review, tech discussions, scrums
• enable development teams to access ALL aspect of Github repo, 100% within Rocket.Chat
• become member of Github Developers Program
• for 100% JavaScript based projects -> complete workflow integration; no need ever to leave Rocket.Chat
• benefits our alma mater, give back to the global developers community that makes open source projects like Rocket.Chat possible
• by developers, for developers
• also good for university courses, programming classes, technical training, mentoring, consultants

Configuration

• optional, configurable via settings
• only for user logged in oauth'd via Github

Features

• per Github project channels
• switch channel to switch project teams
• multiple joined channels = simultaneous multiple teams interactions
• when in project channel - @mentions fetches info from PR and/or Issues
• Gist oembed
• commit notifications
• user info shows recent Github activities
• /merge @pr to merge pull requests

Advanced features

• right flex embedded Ace Editor (syntax highlight and other programmer features)
• search and view any source module
• search and view any commit diffs
• blame hover over any source code line
• checkout-edit-commit-PR cycle all within customized Ace embed
• single switchable writer, multiple viewers - broadcast shared Ace session for code review
• bi-directional link between issues and archived chat messages in which the issue is mentioned

Future advanced JavaScript-only features

• webstorm in Javascript - any symbol search source fetch, one-click declaration source fetch, ES6 classes explorer and so on
• local build and deploy workflow
• staging build and deploy workflow
• production build and deploy workflow
• hooks into server-farms offered by emerging 'platform providers' - Galaxy, Famo.us services, and so on

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[dosire]

I was asked to look at this in #512 (comment) This all sounds interesting. I'm sure we can do the same things for GitLab. One of the things that I think would be great is cross-linking chats and issues. If I mention an issue in a chat the issue should gain a backlink to the chat conversation. This way information is not lost.

[Sing-Li]

Thanks @dosire. Great idea.

Rocket.Chat will need to have some sort of archiving capability to effectively support this (giving every message revision - inclusive of modification and deletion - a permanent unique retrievable address) . Interesting. I'll add this to the master list.

[engelgabriel]

@Sing-Li we added the archiving capability for modification and deletion on a PR done by @marceloschmidt last week :)

It is optional tho, you need to turn the feature on in the settings.

[Sing-Li]

Very cool :) @engelgabriel

Two items:

• how to 'render' a retrieved message revision (a dynamically generated web page? a read-only chat window? But we can probably just offer an API and the other side does the rendering)
• how to maintain/retrieve the visual context of that message (the screenful of related messages as seen by the user before and after it)

[Julia991]

Also I recommend you take a look at the article GitHub vs BitBucket vs GitLab - https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/github-vs-bitbucket-vs-gitlab-developers-research

[louisemessage]

Nice idea, closing for now as trying to free up issues backlog :)

[geekgonecrazy]

These would make for some great app features.

Maybe we should propose some of these features individually that are missing from the apps functionality?