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Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

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21–30 of 86 posts

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#21
post #18

I wonder if Google really loves Gerrit, or if it’s just a legacy NIH attachment and some of Google’s graybeards just refuse to let it go. Having worked with Gerrit in the past, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, it’s an abomination and I’d lop off a limb rather than voluntarily use Gerrit again.

Do you really think Google can really put their whole development and review infrastructure into the hands of a relatively small company named GitHub? The same platform where you see "GitHub is down" on HN every couple of months?

Well, Apple has done a lot of it with Swift. Language evolution discussions and the code itself is on GH.

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#22
If one wants to see the merits or at least the experiences of a major language from a commercial entity going open source on GitHub, where all discussions, language features, issues, and code itself is in that one place, take a look at Apple's Swift.

Edit: Looks like Swift doesn't use GH for issues any more.

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BitBucket is plenty popular as well, I run into projects that are on there instead of GH for Python. I kind of prefer BitBucket to GitHub the only thing GitHub does right is their "Explore" section which I don't think BitBucket has (or GitLab?) but that's about it for me. I don't care where one hosts code, as long as it's not some obscure server.

GitHub has always had far superior code search features. BitBucket is gradually trying to add these, but they still pale compared to GitHub. I love just going through a repo by searching for things.

Except for when you want to search within a different branch.

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#24

Unfortunately the epic comment thread, very talky, none of the key stack holders involved, largely irrelevant chatter... Is a case in point of why github isn't the answer for everything.

> Unfortunately the epic comment thread, very talky, none of the key stack holders involved, largely irrelevant chatter... Is a case in point of why github isn't the answer for everything.

Many of the important stakeholders, both those employed by Google and those who are not, are weighing in on the topic.

And the comment thread looks fairly similar to the mailing list discussion of any moderately controversial issue, which is not unique to Github (or even the Go project).

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#25

If one cannot figure out how to setup a development environment (with detailed guides), how can one be expected to actually make a meaningful contribution in a much more difficult domain like compiler development? For this purpose alone I think the current approach is something that Google will not get rid of. Moreover, why on Earth would Google want to create an external dependency for code-hosting and development l…

The article addresses how Google is already using GitHub with Kubernetes. Looks like Dart does too from glancing through the GitHub. If you're worried about external services going down, you make an internal mirror. You don't force the whole workflow to go through your system.

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#26

If one wants to see the merits or at least the experiences of a major language from a commercial entity going open source on GitHub, where all discussions, language features, issues, and code itself is in that one place, take a look at Apple's Swift. Edit: Looks like Swift doesn't use GH for issues any more.

Swift switched all their issue tracking to Jira a while back

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#27
post #4

Kinda scary how de facto Github has become, that external tooling is discouraged. Github is a bad issue tracker, a bad code review tool, an ok wiki and a bad distribution platform. Still, one has to mostly use the whole package to get contributors. (Github has other strengths, though)

Aside: In your opinion what are good issue trackers and code review tools?

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#28
I've contributed a small patch to Go not that long ago and it was quite straightforward, I don't get why it has to be changed. Plenty of people have used the current workflow for years now...

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#29
It's true that Gerrit's workflow is a bit unusual, but even though I had no experience with it, I managed to setup the environment and create a review request for Golang in under an hour. When it comes to contributing to a programming language, I think this is pretty friction-less.

CLA was very painless too.

Re: Golang Proposal: Just Use GitHub

#30

If one cannot figure out how to setup a development environment (with detailed guides), how can one be expected to actually make a meaningful contribution in a much more difficult domain like compiler development? For this purpose alone I think the current approach is something that Google will not get rid of. Moreover, why on Earth would Google want to create an external dependency for code-hosting and development l…

> If one cannot figure out how to setup a development environment (with detailed guides), how can one be expected to actually make a meaningful contribution in a much more difficult domain like compiler development?

Because those are two unrelated fields, and one is distinctly not productive. From the issue:

> I ran through the contributing workshop at Gophercon 2017. I even had gone through half of it before. I still needed help from one of the guides. It was still arduous. I speak as someone who has written Go professionally 40 hours a week for over 4 years - the contribution workflow deters me from contributing to the Go project. Even after signing up. The fact that it's so different from my everyday workflow just makes the hill to climb too steep.

And comments (from current contributors no less):

> I've been writing Go for over five years and contributing in various forms, and I have to say I agree. go-contrib-init makes things better, but the barrier to contributing to Go is a lot higher and with a different workflow from almost any other project that uses Go.

> As successful as the contributor workshop at Gophercon was, it is an embarrassment to the language that we had to do it at all. Why did we need an entire seminar to teach hundreds of developers who already contribute to many other open source projects how to contribute to Go?

Also, not every contribution to Go involves mucking with the compiler.

> why on Earth would Google want to create an external dependency for code-hosting and development like GitHub

Didn't they move to Google Code to GitHub, which is the live repo, Gerrit being used for code review only? If so, the dependency is already there. If not, why is it on GitHub at all?

> Finally, it is somewhat really silly to think that a giant corp like Google will develop something truly free and opensource, without their own interests above anything else, which obviously will become an issue sooner or later with the truly freedom spirit.

I think somehow this is tackled by the issue author, and is a canary of sorts:

> Let's show the OSS world that Go really is a community-run project

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