Live data from Hacker News

Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

wired.com

161–170 of 347 posts

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#161
post #97

Its interesting that they compare LoC with Windows. I suppose that this article wants us to be amazed at those numbers. However, my experience with Google's products indicates a gradual decline in performance and a simultaneous gradual increase in memory bloat (Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Android). Which ironically, FWIW, hasn't been the case with Windows. I have noticed zero difference in performance going from Windows 7 t…

I'd have to disagree with this. First the baseline: windows is very slow. Second I found later versions slower. Third (and most maddening) every version of windows I've ever used has gotten slower over time (including not installing new s/w and defragmenting).

[deleted]

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#162
post #81

I'm a google software engineer and it's nice to see this public article about our software control system. I think it has plusses and minuses, but one thing I'll say is that when you're in the coding flow, working on a single code base with thousands of engineers can be an intensely awesome experience. Part of my job- although it's not listed as a responsibility- is updating a few key scientific python packages. When…

It sounds like a really awesome workflow, although parts of it really only work on very large teams. I bet the version control system would be very cool though, hopefully it gets a github equivalent and has better branching than mercurial

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#163
post #13

"The two internet giants (Google and Facebook) are working on an open source version control system that anyone can use to juggle code on a massive scale. It’s based on an existing system called Mercurial. “We’re attempting to see if we can scale Mercurial to the size of the Google repository,” Potvin says, indicating that Google is working hand-in-hand with programming guru Bryan O’Sullivan and others who help overs…

Because Google and Facebook are using Mercurial over Git internally. Edit: And for those that are just shocked that git isn't the answer. Facebook: https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling-merc... Google: http://www.primordia.com/blog/2010/01/23/why-google-uses-mer...

[deleted]

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#164
Really interesting article. Sounds like a great solution to the problem in git of submodules. Definitely worth looking at. Thanks for posting OP.

IMO this system would best be suited for large companies, but I could see the VCS that they are developing being used by anyone if it gets a github-esque website.

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#165
post #81

I'm a google software engineer and it's nice to see this public article about our software control system. I think it has plusses and minuses, but one thing I'll say is that when you're in the coding flow, working on a single code base with thousands of engineers can be an intensely awesome experience. Part of my job- although it's not listed as a responsibility- is updating a few key scientific python packages. When…

Could you tell something about the level of documentation? For instance, do you have to write a paragraph of documentation for every function that you add to the system? How about adding preconditions and postconditions, and other invariants?

Also, is the code that you add to the repository always inspected by other people? Is that done systematically?

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#166
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google devs are working (with some help from Facebook) on getting hg into Google, but they're not there yet. Look at all the work that Google has been putting into hg. It's not purely out of the goodness of their hearts: https://selenic.com/hg/log?rev=@google.com&revcount=200 I always see a lot of Google and Facebook at the Mercurial sprints.

I can't comment on what Google might be doing in the future with RCS. Well, I can't comment but also don't know. I personally like hg. But if I were to take a poll of the informed and opinionated engineers sitting around me, they would almost all likely take git over hg. In any case, git is in actual widespread use _now_ at Google, for Android and Chrome, and other open source stuff (some of which was moved recently…

[deleted]

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#167

"The two internet giants (Google and Facebook) are working on an open source version control system that anyone can use to juggle code on a massive scale. It’s based on an existing system called Mercurial. “We’re attempting to see if we can scale Mercurial to the size of the Google repository,” Potvin says, indicating that Google is working hand-in-hand with programming guru Bryan O’Sullivan and others who help overs…

I don't work for FB, but word through the grapevine is that FB wanted to use Git, but the Git folks refused to talk to FB about making it scale. By contrast, hg was happy to have them as users and contributors.

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#169
post #13

"The two internet giants (Google and Facebook) are working on an open source version control system that anyone can use to juggle code on a massive scale. It’s based on an existing system called Mercurial. “We’re attempting to see if we can scale Mercurial to the size of the Google repository,” Potvin says, indicating that Google is working hand-in-hand with programming guru Bryan O’Sullivan and others who help overs…

Because Google and Facebook are using Mercurial over Git internally. Edit: And for those that are just shocked that git isn't the answer. Facebook: https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling-merc... Google: http://www.primordia.com/blog/2010/01/23/why-google-uses-mer...

There may be Mercurial plans for the future, but to date I've never encountered it at Google. Lots of people use git, though, including folks outside of Chrome and Android who are working against Piper.

Re: Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place

#170

I will say that I saw and experienced many things that changed my definition of 'large' at Google, but the most amazing was the source code control / code review / build system that kept it all together. The bad news was that it allowed people to say "I've just changed the API to to support the initiative, code released after this commit will need to be updated." and have that effect hundreds of projects, but at the…

That's actually a good question. What would a world wide environment look like. Currently we have the web, but that isn't really a world wide environment in this sense. I think that this could be a way it would look, but more of a combination of this and a way to split everything down into the parts again without breaking the system. However, I've never worked at G, so I can't know if they have a method for this
Post reply on HN