GitHub rolled out their new notifications and stars feature.But does starring do anything for a repository? Is it just to show support or interest? Is there any functional purpose to the user? If not, why should I use them? Do other users, or maybe even GitHub, benefit from me starring a repository?
What does starring a repository on GitHub do?
notifications;github
The big difference between watching and starring a project comes down to notifications. If you are watching a repository, you will receive notifications for all discussions  project issues, pull requests, comments on commits and any other comments. If youre not watching a repo youll just receive notification for the discussions you participate in.On the other hand, if you star a repository, you basically want to show your appreciation as well as keep track of repositories that you find interesting without it spamming your timeline. This is clearly stated here in the Github blog post,A quick note: activity from starred repositories will not show up in your dashboard feed.The other main thing worth noting is that any repositories you were previously watching can now be found on your stars page. If you want to go back to watching them, youll need to change them over yourself. Theres also a new auto-watch feature; when youre given push access to a repository GitHub automatically adds it to your watch list.You can see a list of your starred repos at github.com/stars.And popular starred repos at github.com/popular/starred