The way you login to CodeShip with your GitHub account, and the way you create projects, is going to change end of September.

You don’t need to do anything, right now at least. We mainly wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the changes ahead of time.

Why are we doing this?

We have long wanted to reduce the access we ask for when you login with GitHub. For most users, we don’t need full access to their repos, but that was the only option for a long time. Now we’re switching to using a new integration to GitHub (GitHub Apps), which not only allows us to be much more specific about what access we need, but also allows us to only ask for access once, and not for all users. On top of it all, we get more options for working with GitHub in the future.

What is changing?

The first thing you’ll notice, is that when you login using the new integration you will be asked to give CodeShip access to your GitHub account. We will only ask for the bare minimum though, so we really only need your email and your GitHub username. We won’t ask you for write access to your repos anymore.

The other thing that is changing is how projects are created and linked to GitHub. If you haven’t already installed the new CodeShip app on your GitHub account/organization, you will be prompted to do so; after that you can simply pick your repo from a dropdown - no more copy/pasting URLs! If you already have the app installed on your GitHub account/organization, you can skip most of it, and just pick the repo you want to link the project to. Just remember the CodeShip app needs access to the repo, which is managed in GitHub.

What else?

Together with the changes already mentioned, we will also release a migration wizard to help you move your projects from the old GitHub integration, to the new CodeShip GitHub App. GitHub will be closing down the old type of integration on Jan 31st, 2019, so if your projects haven’t been migrated before that, they will stop working. The migration is quick and easy though, and we’ve tried to automate it as much as possible. You still need to manually install the CodeShip GitHub App, and allow it access to the relevant repositories, so we couldn’t make it fully automated.

When is this happening?

We’re still ironing out the last issues, but expect the changes to roll out in the last couple of weeks of September. Due to the types of changes involved, we will need to schedule a maintenance window, so we can take everything down and complete most of the migration work. Keep an eye out for details about the maintenance window (you will see it in CodeShip, or on the status page) as this will be the time the GitHub changes will be rolled out.

Who can answer questions?

We’re more than happy to answer any questions you have on these changes, or any other CodeShip question you might have. Just reach out to us and we’ll get you some answers.