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GitHub dropped Pygments

greghendershott.com

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Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#21

Post by alayne »

walterbell wrote: post #18
alayne wrote: post #14

Racket is a fringe language. Github has about as many Prolog repositories as Racket repositories. If Racket syntax highlighting was causing performance issues that were noticeable to Github, performance must have really sucked. Why should Github let Racket drag down its capacity?

Is that the message an open-source vendor wants to send to developers: your code is welcome, unless it's a new and unproven "fringe" language? How would a "fringe" developer feel about that vendor's brand after their language has become successful? Would they like/trust/recommend the vendor to upcoming developers?

Racket isn't new. It's a scheme which has been in development for around 20 years.

Reading their thread, it sure sounds like they want to work with the community to make Racket code viewing a good experience.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#22

Post by walterbell »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #20
isomorphic wrote: post #8

This sort of thing feeds my paranoia about GitHub being a giant single point of failure in the open-source world. I know the argument: Someone, somewhere has a copy of each repo checked out, so we (the nebulous "we") could reconstruct everything from the diaspora of ".git" directories. It just bothers me to think how dependent OSS has become upon GitHub.

The counter-argument is true, though. I have a server that I'm able to log in via SSH. I just backed up one of my repositories like so: sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> ssh irc.sircmpwn.com git init --bare kernel Initialized empty Git repository in /home/sircmpwn/kernel/ sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> git remote add backup irc.sircmpwn.com:kernel sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> git push backup master C…

There is value in the aggregation of repositories which is separate from individual repos.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#23

Post by lexcorvus »

cespare wrote: post #4

I assume the new syntax highlighter is way, way faster than pygments. It's written in C++ rather than Python. (Atom uses the same grammar format, but a Node implementation.)

The new highlighter may be faster, but is syntax highlighting frequently a bottleneck at GitHub? That seems unlikely.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#24

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

walterbell wrote: post #22
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-argument is true, though. I have a server that I'm able to log in via SSH. I just backed up one of my repositories like so: sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> ssh irc.sircmpwn.com git init --bare kernel Initialized empty Git repository in /home/sircmpwn/kernel/ sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> git remote add backup irc.sircmpwn.com:kernel sircmpwn@homura ~/s/K/kernel master> git push backup master C…

There is value in the aggregation of repositories which is separate from individual repos.

True, but it's anything but the end of the world if GitHub vanished from the face of the Earth right now. Everything would be running full steam within a week.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#25

Post by rdtsc »

isomorphic wrote: post #8

This sort of thing feeds my paranoia about GitHub being a giant single point of failure in the open-source world. I know the argument: Someone, somewhere has a copy of each repo checked out, so we (the nebulous "we") could reconstruct everything from the diaspora of ".git" directories. It just bothers me to think how dependent OSS has become upon GitHub.

Good points.

There is a silly joke about that even. It usually goes like --

"Gee, I wish someone would invent a decentralized version control system".

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#26

Post by walterbell »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #24
walterbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is value in the aggregation of repositories which is separate from individual repos.

True, but it's anything but the end of the world if GitHub vanished from the face of the Earth right now. Everything would be running full steam within a week.

There is team and org level authZ and authN data at github that is needed by companies working on cross-company projects. That data is not stored in code repos.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#27

Post by jacquesm »

isomorphic wrote: post #8

This sort of thing feeds my paranoia about GitHub being a giant single point of failure in the open-source world. I know the argument: Someone, somewhere has a copy of each repo checked out, so we (the nebulous "we") could reconstruct everything from the diaspora of ".git" directories. It just bothers me to think how dependent OSS has become upon GitHub.

Why do you think that that is limited to open source? Plenty of businesses utterly rely on github in their workflow.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#28

Post by walterbell »

walterbell wrote: post #5
cespare wrote: post #4

I assume the new syntax highlighter is way, way faster than pygments. It's written in C++ rather than Python. (Atom uses the same grammar format, but a Node implementation.)

Why not give existing users the choice of migration and timing?

Dear downvoters, have you heard of the Streisand effect? This thread now has the most downvotes (-14) of the many comments I've posted on HN. There is nothing factually incorrect in my posts. Why does this question deserve five downvotes?

> Why not give existing users the choice of migration and timing?

Edit: -20 downvotes. Previous record was -3.

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#29

Post by Demiurge »

abhinavg wrote: post #11

I honestly don't see a problem here. They decided to change a backend library for a non-essential system in their product. Most services don't ask for permission or make announcements when they make changes like this. The approach seemed to be, if things break, people will report it and we’ll fix it. While this may not be the best approach, the number of languages supported is too high for a person to check each one…

> It is very unlikely that syntax highlighting errors in GitHub will affect someone's chances of getting a job.

And if it does, the problem lies not with the syntax highlighting, not even close...

Re: GitHub dropped Pygments

#30

Post by dhaivatpandya »

walterbell wrote: post #5
cespare wrote: post #4

I assume the new syntax highlighter is way, way faster than pygments. It's written in C++ rather than Python. (Atom uses the same grammar format, but a Node implementation.)

Why not give existing users the choice of migration and timing?

I don't think it is necessary for Github to provide choice for this sort of thing. It isn't a ground-breaking, massive change to their main product. To me, it seems like an unnecessary choice that would only create confusion and make their product more difficult to navigate and use.
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