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Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

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Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#21
post #12
post #2

The last paragraph is making me think... "Really I think you need a 3rd system that's radically different." I think he's right. I'm not sure what that 3rd system would look like. I wonder if a meta-service piggybacking on both Github and Launchpad would work?

Well, I cooked up an idea: http://fmlr.me/ But, sort of got stuck at how to do the client. I've recently relearned GUI coding and will probably dust the idea off and try it again soon.

Hmm...It would be interesting if one could subscribe to a personalized feed of some sort. Currently I skim my github feed in Google Reader every couple days. The biggest problem with it is that I watch RVM, which is fairly high traffic. It would be neat if I could subscribe to, say, only tag pushes on the RVM repo.

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#22

Here's a thought-bubble about packaging and distributions. In a single piece of software, the compiler can enforce some degree of consistency between different components. In a distribution this is done manually. That's why it scales poorly. Possible solutions: * Cross-application consistency checks. This seems to be the way Singularity is heading. * Smaller distributions -- or rather, standalone VM images that have…

The VM image idea might be most palatable under a kernel-threading scheme like Linux OpenVZ or Solaris Zones. They are very inexpensive and quite efficient.

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#23
post #9
post #3

> The second you made Github more "SysAdmin friendly" you'd piss off the Programmers. Their egos are too softly stroked by having their name first in the URL. I don't think that's true. Having the name first is great for uniqueness of the fork, but has been a pain when finding the canonical version. I've seen plenty of projects that adopt the similarly named user account, which is great.

That was a joke. You know, those things that make people laugh? In seriousness, it sort of doesn't matter if you're a programmer. Either way works so long as the first thing you get is code. If you're a sysadmin or packager though, that's annoying as hell. You want to just go to /project and not worry about the who's-who of forks.

[deleted]

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#24
As a sysadmin, I have to say that I hate Launchpad. I always have click many levels deep to find the thing I want. The interface just sucks.

I also know plenty of other sysadmins who use github but find no value at all in Launchpad.

Also: FWIW, I never notice folks' names on github. The important thing for me is that the code is right there front and center. If I want to download it, I click the clipboard button and then go clone it. Boom.

Edited to add: I also think that if it's not immediately apparent which fork is the "canonical" one, it probably doesn't matter. Just grab whatever looks most popular. If you decide you'd rather have a different one, then grab that later. shrug

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#27
post #4

It's definitely annoying when you are trying to find the "canonical" fork of a project on Github, but it's not THAT hard to just look under the project name and click on the "forked from xyz/project" link (projects rarely go more than a couple of forks deep), or in the worst case click on the network tab and look at the tree. Edit: If it's a Ruby Gem, you can also look up the gem on rubygems.org and click the Homepag…

Anyone who's paying attention will update the readme in the stale fork to make it really obvious. People don't sometimes because they're lazy, but this is an application of the more general "people suck" rule, and not very specific to Github.

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#28
post #13

I really wish Launchpad had at least some support for the GitHub model. Sometimes I don't want to register a project for some half-hour code dump; I want to push it out, namespaced under my uid† to an easily locateable repository. The +junk feature sort of does this, but it's a lot more awkward to use than GitHub because viewers have to jump through flaming hoops to get to the code. Ideally, there would be a http://j…

Hmmmm, that's a damn good idea. /project is for projects, and the canonical true ruler of such. /~dude is for programmers and their forks, half-baked ideas, and random pushes. Yeah, that'd work.

That's about the model Gitorious uses (minus the integration into debian packaging and apt repositories).

In Gitorious the project is the main resource. Developers can be working on a project and they get their own area where they can put forks of the project or other one-off stuff.

You can even easily (for a definition of easy as "doable with some effort") host one yourself for internal projects as it's available under AGPL.

It's still not as easy to use as github (due to the project hurdle and less refined UI) and the public service lacks what makes github especially good: the large community of users

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#29

False dichotomy. Also, github puts the author name before the project name for namespace reasons, not for egotistical ones. At least do your research before bashing them.

You know, I think the cornerstone of Lame-Trolling is pretending like you failed every reading comprehension class in grade school.

Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder

#30
post #24

As a sysadmin, I have to say that I hate Launchpad. I always have click many levels deep to find the thing I want. The interface just sucks. I also know plenty of other sysadmins who use github but find no value at all in Launchpad. Also: FWIW, I never notice folks' names on github. The important thing for me is that the code is right there front and center. If I want to download it, I click the clipboard button and…

> Also: FWIW, I never notice folks' names on github. The important thing for me is that the code is right there front and center. If I want to download it, I click the clipboard button and then go clone it. Boom.

Yeah, I think "BOOM!" is right. If you can't see the flaw in stuff like this:

http://drnicwilliams.com/2009/11/04/hacking-someones-gem-wit...

http://groups.google.com/group/gemcutter/browse_thread/threa...

Then you got no business being a sysadmin and working this way.

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