Everyone learns from this! Now let's form a circle, colour some line-drawings, and watch a Disney flick.
Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it appears that every response to my message said that it wasn't lost but would be in 90 days if no one noticed. That is not the definition of 'never loses changes'. The fact of the matter is that someone that doesn't understand the way git works can cause irreversible damage without recourse if not discovered. In many source control systems this is not the case. I still use git on github even with this flaw.
I think, though, that for "never loses changes" to be meaningful it has to be shorthand for "never loses changes unless you do unsafe things". I mean, it certainly loses changes if you don't push to anywhere and then delete your .git directory. The -f should mean "don't do this, it will probably wreck your shit". Unfortunately certain tools seem to require it way too often so it seems to be going the way of the vener…
This user training gets even worse because git, when refusing to perform an unsafe operation, trains the user to force instead of training the user to fix the problem.
For example, the developer who overwrote the commits in the case in question probably did so after seeing the following error message:
abort: push creates new remote heads on branch 'default'!
(did you forget to merge? use push -f to force)
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#33Wouldn't it be great if your scm actually kept all your changes no matter what?
So it appears that every response to my message said that it wasn't lost but would be in 90 days if no one noticed. That is not the definition of 'never loses changes'. The fact of the matter is that someone that doesn't understand the way git works can cause irreversible damage without recourse if not discovered. In many source control systems this is not the case. I still use git on github even with this flaw.
The underlying problem is that GIT was never meant as a centralized scm. A centralized source control system will never lose changes, even if one of the users messes up. This means that it distinguishes between normal committers and 'admins'. Only admins can do irreversible actions.
Git uses local, cloned repositories and users can do everything they like with them. Changes can be pushed and pulled to other repositories, possibly changing them irreversibly.
By using github you use GIT in a (kind of) centralized way. Suddenly there is an 'central project repository' again, that needs to be protected against damage. But as GIT was never meant to do this, and trusts its users, it has to be bolted on somehow... at least, that's how I understand it.
I hope they will get this right as it's very important for accountability.
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#34Shame on those who upvoted the original linkbait story. When will these sorts of sensational headlines stop?
No kidding, if I were GH I would be furious that that story was sitting at the top of HN (which is about as influential in the circles GH cares about as it gets) for the better part of a day.
It's embarrassing for both Andrew and for HN.
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think, though, that for "never loses changes" to be meaningful it has to be shorthand for "never loses changes unless you do unsafe things". I mean, it certainly loses changes if you don't push to anywhere and then delete your .git directory. The -f should mean "don't do this, it will probably wreck your shit". Unfortunately certain tools seem to require it way too often so it seems to be going the way of the vener…
This user training gets even worse because git, when refusing to perform an unsafe operation, trains the user to force instead of training the user to fix the problem. For example, the developer who overwrote the commits in the case in question probably did so after seeing the following error message: abort: push creates new remote heads on branch 'default'! (did you forget to merge? use push -f to force) While it me…
That appears to be an hg error message.
The git version is:
$ git push github master
To git@gitproxy:rip747/ cfwheels.git
! [rejected] master -> master (non-fast forward)
error: failed to push some refs to ‘git@gitproxy:rip747/cfwheels.git’
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#36I wish github (and git in general) had a better way to view the history of your history, as it were. It's great that get let's you change histoy, but it can be quite problematic if someone messes up that history, especially if it's not caught right away. Yes, it's in the reflog, but so is _everything_, so finding the right thing can be quite daunting.
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#37Instant overreaction and posting to HN has come up a lot lately. The Skype story yesterday was another mistake where a technical support person wrote that a bug was "by design" when they meant to type "bug," so of course it gets raced into HN as 'news' rather than trying to get clarification.
Indeed, this seems to be a sure fire way of getting some attention here lately. Experience some sort of inconsistency in service/support, and quickly write up an "expose" like blog post.
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#38[deleted]
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#39Who says the person who shouts the loudest doesn't get heard? The benefit and downfall with having such transparency is that consumer errors could break confidence in a service. Glad the retraction made it to the top of the pile today. I heard this story from a co-worker the other day, basically presented as "github was down and in fact losing commits".
Re: Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, GitHub acted in a classy way too. Tom helped Andrew throughout the thread without any snark or dismissals that are, sadly, quite easy to dish out. It certainly contrasts with the recent "go away" Tumblr story.
Hadn't heard of this. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151768
Don't forget to see this comment! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203
As well as this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152047