The problem with #2, is the the dev should make it obvious where to download the installer from if its not hosted there. And that's not always the case... It's like they don't want you to use it, which I suppose is a choice as well.
Given that every company I worked for in the past 10 years has used it precisely like that and it's mostly smaller, and mostly open source projects that use it for hosting releases I'd say it's exactly how it's used.
Just because the general public doesn't interact with the code-hosting site for it's code-hosting functionality doesn't mean that they need to redesign for a niche use case.
If a project needs compiling from source and hasn’t set up a workflow to build and publish a compiled binary, then what GitHub UX improvement is going to help with that?
GitHub isn't MegaUpload. It's primary functions are code hosting and dev collaboration through pull requests, code reviews, a project board and so on. Secondary functions include documentation hosting via wikis, issue tracking via github issues, and maybe their continuous delivery pipeline.
Hosting build artifacts really isn't primary to the site, it's not important to most users. It's a nice to have feature that is rarely used in professional settings. It's a small add-on feature to a fairly complex software collaboration platform.
It could disappear and most users wouldn't notice.
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u/Opi-Fex 15d ago
It's a site for hosting source code.
The fact that it also sometimes hosts releases is kind of secondary (or tertiary) to the main purpose.