131–140 of 163 posts
Anyone else having trouble building and running it (Ubuntu 23.10)? > thread 'main' panicked at libcalibre/src/infrastructure/domain/book/repository.rs:20:62: called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: ()
Yes — sorry! I hadn't pushed local changes yet. I didn't expect a big reception! `main` is up-to-date now and SHOULD be building. Feel free to email me (phil at denhoff dot ca) if you run into issues, or add a GitHub issue.
Sometimes I feel that if Calibre just looked better people would realize how amazing it is. It’s honestly not that bad (I actually love it) but I think people can’t get past the aesthetic.
As an aside, some folks may ask "why write a new app instead of contributing to Calibre Web or a similar project?" It's a good question! Because I wanted to :) Right now, this is a hobby project — I'm more interested in having fun building (rough!!) software than worried about extending existing projects. Plus, with how Citadel is designed to be backwards compatible with Calibre, you can continue to use Calibre Web.…
It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead an…
Note that I said "most" above. There are reasons to write a start a new project despite others in the same space existing. However this should not be done until you define what is wrong with existing projects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes — sorry! I hadn't pushed local changes yet. I didn't expect a big reception! `main` is up-to-date now and SHOULD be building. Feel free to email me (phil at denhoff dot ca) if you run into issues, or add a GitHub issue.
I would be glad to help you set up GitHub Actions to build branches if that interests you. On the one hand, I'm for sure not a GHA (nor rust nor bun) ninja, but OTOH I do have a passion for painless builds :-)
It sounds like some folks have issues building on Linux, but FWIW I had no problems building in a Codespace.
As an aside, some folks may ask "why write a new app instead of contributing to Calibre Web or a similar project?" It's a good question! Because I wanted to :) Right now, this is a hobby project — I'm more interested in having fun building (rough!!) software than worried about extending existing projects. Plus, with how Citadel is designed to be backwards compatible with Calibre, you can continue to use Calibre Web.…
It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead an…
Don't be sad! Based on the most recent threads discussing Calibre [0] it would seem that the disclaimer isn't strictly necessary, and actually OP appears to be addressing a problem that resonates with a fair number of people on HN!
That said, there is always going to be someone that will "have a few qualms with this app" [1] regardless so it doesn't hurt to get in front of the question.
[0] See:
- Calibre New in Calibre 7.0 -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316846
- Calibre replacement considerations -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364885
Do you plan to handle custom folder hierarchy?
Not with Calibre libraries. If you ever go back to using Calibre, I’m not sure how it will respond to having all of the files “messed up” in the wrong spot — the docs are quite clear that there is ONE way to store books. That said, the end goal is to have a native Citadel way to manage libraries and that WOULD support custom folder hierarchies.
As an aside, some folks may ask "why write a new app instead of contributing to Calibre Web or a similar project?" It's a good question! Because I wanted to :) Right now, this is a hobby project — I'm more interested in having fun building (rough!!) software than worried about extending existing projects. Plus, with how Citadel is designed to be backwards compatible with Calibre, you can continue to use Calibre Web.…
Would you mind explaining what is going on in the backend? You seem to be using both Rust and Bun/Typescript?
The backend is straight Rust. Bun is used as a package management tool & as a script runner, to invoke Tauri commands that start up a Vite webserver to provide the UI, and start something that rebuilds the binary when Rust files change. Typescript is used for the Svelte UI. Svelte talks to the Rust backend through Tauri (by default). Both support a headless/web mode where the Svelte frontend connects to the backend o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead an…
Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. So instead of reinventing the wheel I strongly encou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's slightly sad that you have to give this disclaimer, especially on a forum for hackers. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from a John Carmack commencement speech: "In many areas, it's almost received wisdom that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel. But I would urge you to occasionally try anyways. You'll be better for the effort, and this is how eventually we get better wheels. By people just going ahead an…
Reinventing the wheel is fine. However most attempts should be done "in your basement" and thrown away. Don't publish your attempt on the likes of github. Learn what you can from it and then throw it away. Apply lessons learned the the dominate project already there. There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them. So instead of reinventing the wheel I strongly encou…
I couldn't disagree with this more. Reinventing something in public view can be extraordinarily valuable, even if without a clearly defined problem to address. Off the top of my head:
- Learning in public can have benefits: I personally tend to write much better software if I know there is any chance someone else might see it and reinventing the wheel (Todo app anyone?) is a great way to focus on learning some new techniques or technology without the added overhead of also inventing a novel solution to some hard problem.
- Contributing to the dominate project in any space requires working within the constraints of the existing code and project/user expectations, and if you just show up out of the blue trying to "apply lessons learned", you also need to make a convincing argument for why your way is the better way. On the other hand, reinventing the project allows the freedom to experiment and demonstrate some radical alternative and doing it in public allows anyone (including dominant project maintainers and users) to learn from it.
- People that don't have any interest in the original project, but do have interest in aspects of the reinvention can benefit. For example, I haven't used Calibre in years and don't plan to now, but I'm grateful the author shared this because I hadn't heard of Tauri prior or seen a Bun project, and now I'm exploring the repo and learning something new.
> There are many good open source projects that could be great if more developers would work on them.
Eh. Sounds like a Zero-Sum Fallacy.