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SDL Moves to GitHub

discourse.libsdl.org

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Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#101

Post by genmud »

encom wrote: post #55
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GitHub is generally safe as long as you have an exit plan for when it's no longer the place you want to be. Know where you're moving your issues and actions if you decide you need to leave.

Since the Microsoft takeover, the platform is compromised. It seems people have very short memories.

Microsoft is a completely different company than it was even just 5 or 10 years ago. Saying that MS is an enemy of open source is uninformed at best and idiotic at worse.

Do me a favor, look at Facebook [1], Apple [2], Amazon [3], Netflix [4] and Google [5]. Now tell me which one has more Open Source repos than MS [6]. I'll give you a hint... none of them. Sure, volume of open source repos may not be the best metric, but to say in 2021 they are enemies of open source with almost 4k open source repos is just dumb.

Hell, even the new MS terminal [7] is open source. They realized that FOSS isn't the enemy and is actually good for the tech industry at large.

[1] https://github.com/facebook [2] https://github.com/apple [3] https://github.com/amzn [4] https://github.com/Netflix [5] https://github.com/google [6] https://github.com/microsoft [7] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#102

Post by qbasic_forever »

coliveira wrote: post #81

This sounds like an indictment of git. It was supposed to make it easier for OSS developers to collaborate, but it turns out that you become bound to a monopoly like Microsoft. Why can't git users develop an easy to maintain server, like svn and fossil did, for example?

Read-up on the history of git. It was not designed to be a new panacea of OSS development. It was designed to keep the Linux kernel development running smoothly after their commercial source code host dropped them--that's it.

Running a git server is actually very easy, just run the git-daemon command: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Git-Daemon This is actually easier than running something like Gitlab that requires setting up a database, a reverse proxy, or even an entire runtime environment like Kubernetes, etc.

You're falling into a trap of conflating git with Github. Github took the mechanics of git and built a slick, centralized, commercial source code host on top of it. They made a social network that engaged users and gamified writing code. Lots of folks are working on similar commercial and open source variations of the same. But in all those cases git is just a part of the tech and not tightly coupled to the success (or failure) of them.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#103

Post by Lammy »

zamadatix wrote: post #94
qbasic_forever wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SDL is a project with a long history, so let's pretend they move a backlog of 5,000 issues over to Github. Everything is great--now users can search, discuss, open, manage, etc. all these issues on a slick web UI. People are happy and things just work. Now some years later there's a blog post from Github, "An update to our free tier" that outlines dramatic changes. It turns out Microsoft needs to make some changes to…

So the threat is some number of years down the line they may have to go back to paying to host and maintain the infrastructure themselves again? I'd take that deal.

Tough luck for anyone who had linked to the project/issues on github dot com instead of sdl dot org.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#104

Post by iforgotpassword »

fileeditview wrote: post #29
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder why they did not pick GitLab since it is significantly better for FOSS ideals and has the same niceness of GitHub

My guess is the network-effect. If you want more contributions Github is the platform to pick for your project. Good or bad it is the de facto standard platform for OSS projects with a huge pool of potential developers.

That's it. Back in the day that's what was great about source forge. Now it's github. Many people already have an account there so you significantly lower the bar for people to get involved with patches, bug reports etc.

If a project has self hosted infra and wants me to sign up to their Bugzilla I think twice before doing so.

And if github really turns to shit because Microsoft shows their true evil face you can just move platforms again.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#105

Post by tux1968 »

rileymat2 wrote: post #99
tux1968 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git branches and tags were independent features from the very start. It's true that branches were not stored in a separate directory, but that really wouldn't add much. There were tools to check out a branch into a separate working directory on the filesystem. And it was always straightforward to store branches in separate full repos too.

That is fine, but what git does not have is branches baked into the history of the repo like HG or svn does. With git you can see this if you merge things back and forth then remove the branch names. There is no way to tell which commit was on was which branch. You just have the graph of commits. This is not true of HG, it is always there baked into the history.

Yes, you're right. Although there are easy ways to mitigate this if it's actually important. Simply including the branch name in each commit message is simple enough, or disabling fast-forward merges so that each merge has its own separate commit and meta-data. Or even just not merging like that in the first place and using "feature branches" that are only ever merged back into the master branch, never the other way.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#106

Post by jrochkind1 »

moron4hire wrote: post #100
stu2b50 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that may be technically true but practically without something Github-like it's very difficult to make it work. If you started a FOSS project today with a mailing list wherein contributors mail you git patches, you would get exactly 0 contributors. And maybe that's ok, maybe this is your baby, and if someone wants to push code to it they can learn how to email a patch to you. But for many developers, they do w…

Well, to be fair, regardless of what you do, the likelihood that you will get exactly zero contributors is very high. Oh, you'll get complaints, that much is very achievable. But actual contributions? Even simple, bullshit code boot camp homework exercises? Good luck.

Why would someone want to contribute to a bullshit boot camp homework exersize? That seems literally the least likely thing to get any collaborators on.

But, sure, if you don't care about making the development tools something that anyone other than you find convenient, than you can of course just pick whatever you find convenient, nobody is going to stop you.

That's still not a mailing list with patches for most people, but if it is for you, that's great, nobody's going to tell you you can't do that.

The OP said he was switching because he thought their current systems were taking too much of his time to maintain, and were still too hard to use for other collaborators.

You seem to be trying to tell him he's wrong and those systems didn't really take too much of his time, and he actually didn't have any other potential collaborators anyway.... it's a weird argument.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#107

Post by hyperion2010 »

zokier wrote: post #57
rockooooo wrote: post #2

"So in moving it to GitHub, we’re finding that a lot of things are just nicer because a large paid staff of engineers is working on it every day. And I grew up during the heydey of the Free Software Foundation, so I know this is a trap, but I’m tired and don’t have the energy to be a server admin for something that’s held together with scotch tape and prayers when I’m really supposed to be writing OpenGL code." This…

Personally I find this far more worrisome signal of the health of foss ecosystem than the quibbles between elastic and amazon. To me the idea of software "by hackers for hackers" and scratching your own itch has always been one of the key attractions in FOSS ecosystem, but somehow now our itches seem to have outgrown our ability to scratch then. Doing almost anything yourself feels impractical these days. This is als…

For better or for worse, this is nothing new. It is a symptom of the fact that the FSF and other FOSS organizations have displayed a fantastic failure of technical leadership for over 3 decades. The political leadership has not been bad, but if you go back and dig through the history of open source you will see that there have been multiple repeated failures by the supposed thought leaders to provide the equivalent level of technical excellence that is required to compete.

Making the lives of developers of free software easier has rarely if ever been on the list of priorities for many of the core projects.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#108

Post by cogman10 »

genmud wrote: post #101
encom wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the Microsoft takeover, the platform is compromised. It seems people have very short memories.

Microsoft is a completely different company than it was even just 5 or 10 years ago. Saying that MS is an enemy of open source is uninformed at best and idiotic at worse. Do me a favor, look at Facebook [1], Apple [2], Amazon [3], Netflix [4] and Google [5]. Now tell me which one has more Open Source repos than MS [6]. I'll give you a hint... none of them. Sure, volume of open source repos may not be the best metric,…

And this, btw, is the KEY to show that if MS decides to be evil there's a LOT of motivated players that would happily step in with a new platform and take over.

The fact that Apple is trusting MS with their source code really should tell you that your open source project will be fine. What you'll want to watch out for is when these other competitors decide to abandon ship.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#109

Post by tootie »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #102
coliveira wrote: post #81

This sounds like an indictment of git. It was supposed to make it easier for OSS developers to collaborate, but it turns out that you become bound to a monopoly like Microsoft. Why can't git users develop an easy to maintain server, like svn and fossil did, for example?

Read-up on the history of git. It was not designed to be a new panacea of OSS development. It was designed to keep the Linux kernel development running smoothly after their commercial source code host dropped them--that's it. Running a git server is actually very easy, just run the git-daemon command: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Git-Daemon This is actually easier than running something like Gitla…

That reminds me that it's been years since I bothered moaning that the industry chose git over mercurial.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#110

Post by madeofpalk »

zokier wrote: post #57
rockooooo wrote: post #2

"So in moving it to GitHub, we’re finding that a lot of things are just nicer because a large paid staff of engineers is working on it every day. And I grew up during the heydey of the Free Software Foundation, so I know this is a trap, but I’m tired and don’t have the energy to be a server admin for something that’s held together with scotch tape and prayers when I’m really supposed to be writing OpenGL code." This…

Personally I find this far more worrisome signal of the health of foss ecosystem than the quibbles between elastic and amazon. To me the idea of software "by hackers for hackers" and scratching your own itch has always been one of the key attractions in FOSS ecosystem, but somehow now our itches seem to have outgrown our ability to scratch then. Doing almost anything yourself feels impractical these days. This is als…

Or, some itches just require more work to scratch than you can reasonably do on the weekend.
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