GitHub just launched its first big new product since Microsoft bought it for $7.5 billion, and it's a crucial service for developers

The code-sharing website GitHub, sometimes called the "Facebook for programmers," announced a major tool that will make it easy for developers to find tools that improve the process of writing software.

The GitHub Package Registry hopes to help programmers quickly find public and private packages — that is, bundles of preexisting code and documentation — and add them to their own software to speed up the process of development. Programmers turn to these kinds of packages to reduce the need to reinvent the wheel with every project.

It's also the first major product launch for GitHub since Microsoft officially acquired it for $7.5 billion in October. In the intervening months, GitHub has launched several smaller features and refinements and has made tweaks to its business model, such as making previously premium features like private repositories available for free. This marks the first time since, however, that GitHub shows signs of an expanding strategy, post-acquisition. 

Read more: GitHub makes its first major move since Microsoft bought it for $7.5 billion — and it's something customers have long been asking for

GitHub Package Registry is available in limited beta, and the company is encouraging developers to upload their code and help promote the best offerings on the service. It's intended to host open-source code, which means that anyone can download the packages on the service and modify them as they wish.

Although GitHub Package Registry is free, GitHub is working on developing a commercial offering around it, with additional features around security and compliance for business users, as well as the option to host private versions of the registry with their own proprietary code.

'Ease of use'

Bryan Clark, the director of product at GitHub, said customers have been asking for this feature for some time, and the company has worked on this project for the past six months.

"For developers, this is an ease-of-use system," Clark told Business Insider.

GitHub Package Registry management supports tools in multiple languages — notably NPM for JavaScript tools, Maven for Java, RubyGems for Ruby, NuGet for .Net, and Docker images. GitHub is working on adding support for more languages and expects additions to arrive throughout the year.

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This new feature is similar to the registry operated by startup NPM, which is a public collection of open-source JavaScript packages used by 11 million developers for web apps, mobile apps, and more. Clark said he sees GitHub Package Registry as a "parallel offer" to NPM's popular tool.

"Our system's developers can publish automatically and take any of those packages published in GitHub and promote them in NPM," Clark said.

In general, Clark said, GitHub is excited to see how developers use the new registry. 

"We're really excited to see this launch go out. We're looking forward to seeing developers use this and see how it evolves," Clark said.

GitHub CEO Nat Friedman first teased the new feature on Wednesday.

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