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GitHub for Windows

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Re: GitHub for Windows

#101
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your problem with someone being scared of crypto stuff? I find this shows the necessary respect when dealing with security related tasks, since they are HARD. I'm not talking about developing crypto related software, but just setting up a "safe" environment where you can store your SSH Keys in a way that doesn't defeat the purpose of using them in the first place is non-trivial, even for people with degrees.…

It's one thing to be scared of the deep inner-workings of OpenSSH (which truly can be scary). It's another thing to be "scared" of ssh-keygen, especially considering it's something that most competent developers will use when managing servers, deploying to Heroku, managing source, etc. "ssh-keygen -t rsa", set a passcode on it, upload the id_rsa.pub and you're done. Demonstrating a lack of understanding of that was w…

Nobody said anything about it being scary to type "ssh-keygen -t rsa" but rather about the responsibility that comes with it.

I'd bet my right hand the more than 25% of "competent developers" that are "managing servers" will have made security mistakes while storing their ssh keys on a level with storing the password in plaintext on a .txt file on the desktop.

Thats whats scary about "crypto stuff", not that it isn't easy to use the tools, its hard to be really sure how to put them to good use when you are no expert on IT security.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the info. It looks like you chose to embed Chromium for rendering markdown? What was the reason for not using an embedded IE instance (which is already part of every Windows installation).

IE doesn't participate in the WPF rendering system, so it would have all kinds of glitches like it sitting above all other controls (referred to in the docs as "Airspace Issues"), as well as unthemed controls (specifically the scroll bar - stuck out like a sore thumb). The markup that READMEs use is really simple, IE would've been fine for it.

Airspace issues have been the bane of my existence until WPF3.5sp1. D3DImage! Side note -- I also advocate Caliburn.Micro, it's great!

Re: GitHub for Windows

#103
Seems nice except for how it keeps pushing you to login to github, that would probaby get annoying after a while if working with non-github repos. Also the diffs weren't working with the java files I tried it with, it just minuses and plusses the whole file, hopefully just a bug they can fix. This is my first look at a Windows 8 UI and if this is representative of the fufure I am worried, but it does looks pretty. Overall though this is a good effort.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#104
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your problem with someone being scared of crypto stuff? I find this shows the necessary respect when dealing with security related tasks, since they are HARD. I'm not talking about developing crypto related software, but just setting up a "safe" environment where you can store your SSH Keys in a way that doesn't defeat the purpose of using them in the first place is non-trivial, even for people with degrees.…

It's one thing to be scared of the deep inner-workings of OpenSSH (which truly can be scary). It's another thing to be "scared" of ssh-keygen, especially considering it's something that most competent developers will use when managing servers, deploying to Heroku, managing source, etc. "ssh-keygen -t rsa", set a passcode on it, upload the id_rsa.pub and you're done. Demonstrating a lack of understanding of that was w…

Problem is, not everyone who wants to program is willing to go through these steps. Even being a security engineer myself, I balked at some of the steps. I know why they're required, and I understand the steps behind them, but man all I want to do is put this little script somewhere where I don't have to worry about it getting lost.

I don't want to have to do it all command-line, I don't want to have to copy and paste from their blog, I don't want to have to do it by hand. I'm not a competent developer (and I reject your assertion that you need to be a competent developer to use version control), I'm not setting up a server, I'm not deploying to Heroku. I want this script backed up and I want it version controlled. No reason why it should be hard.

No reason why it should be hard, because the whole goal of technology is to make life easier. I'm scared by the thought of a lot of stuff inside my computer and OS, but luckily there wasn't someone with your mindset and now anyone can easily get a computer from bare metal to running Angry Birds in Chrome. I'm not a developer although I write scripts sometimes, and the barrier to entry should not be set higher than absolutely necessary. If that means GUI, then so be it.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#105

Great news. I got flamed a month ago [1] for noting how difficult it is to get up and running on GitHub in the Windows world, where things like generating SSH keys aren't exactly part of the daily routine. Glad to hear that they were listening. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871699

"Scary crypto stuff"? So you don't understand how PKI works and you're trying to use distributed source control? (I say this not to be a jerk, but because there aren't exactly a wealth of good alternatives given it is a distributed source control mechanism. PKI comes with the territory and an SSH key generation is part of that) GitHub doesn't take any more setup than a standard Git setup takes (well, outside of signi…

PKI has nothing to do with SSH keys. Github's use of SSH does not use certificates, and github has no certification infrastructure.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#106
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your problem with someone being scared of crypto stuff? I find this shows the necessary respect when dealing with security related tasks, since they are HARD. I'm not talking about developing crypto related software, but just setting up a "safe" environment where you can store your SSH Keys in a way that doesn't defeat the purpose of using them in the first place is non-trivial, even for people with degrees.…

It's one thing to be scared of the deep inner-workings of OpenSSH (which truly can be scary). It's another thing to be "scared" of ssh-keygen, especially considering it's something that most competent developers will use when managing servers, deploying to Heroku, managing source, etc. "ssh-keygen -t rsa", set a passcode on it, upload the id_rsa.pub and you're done. Demonstrating a lack of understanding of that was w…

The important thing you missed then and are still missing now is that none of that stuff you mention happens in the Windows world.

We set up VPNs to our servers and access them via network paths or directly using Remote Desktop. One can go one's entire career without ever typing ssh-keygen into a terminal window. It's certainly not a step involved in setting up a client to talk to version control.

You don't have to believe me on this. You can read the article we're talking about here and see this same sentiment expressed by the GitHub team themselves.

Thanks to that team, folks in our side of the dev world now have an easy path into Git and GitHub, and can go about our merry way building things without ever having to parse what it was that you did in your second paragraph.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#107

Finally an application with a UI which really nicely blends with the Windows 8 look and feel. Microsoft should be pleased.

MetroTwit is the only other app with a great new Metro UI that I've found.

There are several, they just don't get much attention these days.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your problem with someone being scared of crypto stuff? I find this shows the necessary respect when dealing with security related tasks, since they are HARD. I'm not talking about developing crypto related software, but just setting up a "safe" environment where you can store your SSH Keys in a way that doesn't defeat the purpose of using them in the first place is non-trivial, even for people with degrees.…

It's one thing to be scared of the deep inner-workings of OpenSSH (which truly can be scary). It's another thing to be "scared" of ssh-keygen, especially considering it's something that most competent developers will use when managing servers, deploying to Heroku, managing source, etc. "ssh-keygen -t rsa", set a passcode on it, upload the id_rsa.pub and you're done. Demonstrating a lack of understanding of that was w…

> managing servers, deploying to Heroku, managing source

I'd hate to say it but if you're introducing someone in Windows land to source control then NONE of the items on that list are part of their skill set.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#109
Nice to see this happen. Though Git Bash running on mingw32 actually is very handy, TortoiseGit also does a great job. But it is also good to have options.

Re: GitHub for Windows

#110

Great news. I got flamed a month ago [1] for noting how difficult it is to get up and running on GitHub in the Windows world, where things like generating SSH keys aren't exactly part of the daily routine. Glad to hear that they were listening. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871699

"Scary crypto stuff"? So you don't understand how PKI works and you're trying to use distributed source control? (I say this not to be a jerk, but because there aren't exactly a wealth of good alternatives given it is a distributed source control mechanism. PKI comes with the territory and an SSH key generation is part of that) GitHub doesn't take any more setup than a standard Git setup takes (well, outside of signi…

For many people there Github = git, so saying github isn't much harder to set up than Git isn't saying much.

Using git on Windows has historically not been super fun. The CLI installer mostly works, but it's pretty clunky. Cygwin works fine too, but it's also not especially elegant. At the very least, known of these solutions conform to the expectations of people of the platform. The GUI clients on Windows last I looked (a year ago) were pretty terrible, especially compared to TortoiseSVN, which isn't bad. OS X, on the other hand, had several very nice GUI clients even before the official Github client came out.

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