It’s another monthly burst of news about bors, the GitHub bot that prevents broken builds from landing in mainline.

In the last month, we landed 22 PRs in the bors-ng repository.

By the way, we’ve got a real domain name now! Goodbye to bors-ng.github.io and bors-app.herokuapp.com, and hello to bors.tech and app.bors.tech.

Bors-NG has also adopted the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. This has been a long time coming, and was blocked on getting a moderator mailing list set up to report unacceptable behavior. That mailing list is now set up, and running on the new domain name as [email protected].

Notable Additions

  • veverkap set up the .github/bors.toml config path, in addition to the regular bors.toml path
  • jniles migrated the webhook handler to GitHub’s new Apps API
  • notriddle made bors ignore comment-edit webhooks for commands
  • notriddle added a History tab where reviewers can see crash information and batch history
  • khodzha extended the command syntax so that bors: r+ acts the same as bors r+, bringing bors-ng’s syntax closer to homu’s
  • notriddle created the reference manual of configuration and command options, which can be found here
  • notriddle fixed a bug that caused bors to crash whenever it tried to bisect a branch
  • khodzha implemented a feature that will delete branches after merging them into master
  • khodzha implemented a command that people can use to check if the bot is up; bors ping
  • notriddle changed the domain name of the public instance to app.bors.tech
  • notriddle added the deployed commit to the dashboard footer
  • notriddle upgraded bors-ng to OTP 20 and Elixir 1.5
  • carols10cents fixed the “Add/Remove Repositories” button on third-party instances of bors, allowing admins to specify the URL of their app
  • carols10cents upgraded the Set Up Your Own Instance guide to changes that GitHub has made to the App Setup UI

New Contributors

Want to see your name in this newsletter? Look at bors starters, a curated list of issues that are good for new contributors!

Who’s using bors?

This month’s featured project is BHIMA version 2, the basic hospital information management application.

Technically speaking, it’s a web-based database-centric business app. Unlike other ERPs, BHIMA targets a low resource, multi-currency and multi-lingual environment. Hospital workers input medical, financial, and pharmaceutical data via online forms, and they can use it to look up things like vacancies, the financial status of any patient, and their medical history. Manager queries are also provided against the database, so that they can generate data about the hospital (traffic patterns, current stock, and spending habits, for example) and plan accordingly.

BHIMA is open source under the GPL, and it’s developed Interchurch Medical Assistance World Health, a nonprofit focusing on health system strengthening in underdeveloped countries (see IMA’s page on CharityNavigator and Forbes’s “200 largest charities” description). IMA’s programs encompass distributing medical and nutritional supplies, advocacy and social justice initiatives, sexual health education, and capacity building for health infrastructure (BHIMA being one of several software initiatives in this field).

Got any suggestions for next month? Post a comment on the August pull request.