Stabilization update: what we’ve done, what’s next, and a huge thank you

[eyalgal]

Hi everyone 👋

As we near the end of our initial stabilization push for the GitHub Terraform provider, I wanted to share an update on what we’ve accomplished together, what we’re focusing on next, and where we’re headed in the coming weeks.

What we’ve accomplished so far (which is really a lot!)

Over the past few weeks, the community and GitHub folks have shipped a ton of improvements and unblocked long-stalled work:

• First releases since February:
  • 2 minor releases: v6.7.0 and v6.8.0
  • 8 patch releases
• Across the project (excluding merges), 41 authors have pushed:
  • 82 commits to main
  • 122 commits across all branches
• On main alone:
  • 3,580 files changed
  • 321,471 additions
  • 95,047 deletions

That’s a huge amount of progress in a relatively short period, and it reflects a mix of bug fixes, improvements, and foundational work to make this provider healthier and easier to evolve.

On the people side, we’ve also made real progress:

• 5 community co-maintainers have joined (and we’re still welcoming more!)
• 4 internal maintainers are now actively involved

This combination of community and internal maintainers is exactly what we were hoping for to keep the provider responsive and sustainable.

What we’re focusing on and why

Right now, we’re laser-focused on the “day after” stabilization, making sure that once this focused effort ends, the provider is in a much better place to maintain and evolve.

That means prioritizing work that:

• Makes the provider easier to maintain over time
• Unblocks important new features and improvements
• Reduces the number of issues that are currently hard or impossible to fix due to older dependencies and limitations
• Improves the experience and support we can offer users

Some of the highest-impact issues we want to address depend on upgrading underlying libraries and modernizing how the provider interacts with the GitHub API. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s foundational: once it’s done, a lot of other things become possible.

What’s ahead over the next two weeks

The biggest piece of work in the immediate term is the go-github upgrade.

The version of go-github we’re using today is quite old and has become a major blocker for:

• Implementing newer GitHub features
• Cleaning up older, brittle code paths
• Improving long-term compatibility and supportability

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be focused on:

• Upgrading go-github to v77 in this PR
• Preparing and shipping a major release of the provider based on that upgrade
• Managing and documenting the breaking changes that will come with it

In parallel, we’re also working on support for Projects v2 (and also upgrading go-github to v79), currently in draft in this PR. This is one of the concrete examples of work that the dependency upgrades help unlock.

This will likely be a v7.0.0 release and will include breaking changes by design. The goal is to take the hit once, in a controlled way, so that we can move faster and more safely afterward.

Moving fast (and learning quickly)

We are moving fast right now, and sometimes that pace can introduce new issues. When that happens, we are:

• Following up quickly with patch releases to address regressions
• Investing in our CI/CD and testing so that the same mistakes do not happen again

The goal is not just to move quickly, but to keep improving the safety nets around the provider so that future changes are both faster and more reliable.

What success looks like after this sprint

By the time this sprint ends, here’s what we’re aiming for:

• Easier to maintain:
  • A more modern, maintainable codebase
  • Dependencies like go-github upgraded, reducing tech debt
• Releases shipped:
  • Two minor releases: the v6.7.x and v6.8.x lines stabilized
  • One major release: v7.0.0 with clearly documented breaking changes
• Stronger maintainer pool:
  • A healthy group of community and internal maintainers
  • More people comfortable reviewing PRs, triaging issues, and supporting users

If we get this right, the provider should feel more predictable, more responsive, and easier to contribute to.

Looking forward (beyond stabilization)

Beyond this sprint, we’re still finalizing how we’ll manage the provider long-term - internally and with the community. Once those decisions are settled, I’ll share more details about:

• How we’ll prioritize issues and features
• How we’ll continue to involve and empower community maintainers
• What you can expect in terms of cadence and communication

For now, the focus is on landing this foundational work so that whatever comes next is built on a solid base.

Thank you to our new maintainers 💚

I want to give a huge thank you to the new community co-maintainers and internal maintainers who’ve stepped up recently. Your reviews, triage, code contributions, and discussions have already made a massive difference.

If you’re interested in helping maintain the provider, whether that’s reviewing PRs, improving docs, or tackling issues, please reach out in this discussion or on the existing maintainer call for volunteers. We’re still looking to grow the pool of maintainers and collaborators.

Thanks again to everyone who’s opened issues, submitted PRs, tested changes, or just given thoughtful feedback. This has truly been a community effort, and it’s what makes this project worth investing in.

[mroyme]

Hey @eyalgal!

We've been maintaining a fork at nexthink-oss/terraform-provider-github during the period when this repository was inactive. Our fork includes support for automatic copilot reviews, organization custom properties (which has since been added to the official provider) as well as the ability to manage custom properties directly from the repository resource.

If you're looking for additional co-maintainers, I'd be very interested in contributing. I'd prefer to see newer features available upstream rather than continuing to maintain a separate fork.

[eyalgal]

Hi @mroyme!
That sounds fantastic. We’d definitely love to have you involved upstream and help maintain the provider.
I’ll reach out to you directly on LinkedIn so we can get you added to our maintainer Slack and start coordinating work together.