I thinks this is fairly wrong as its more of a project based (launchpad) vs code based(github) approach. Sys admins can write a decent amount of short scripts which don't mesh well with a project based approach, many programmers may prefer github for scaling down more and making the code easier to find but the more stability you want the more you might like a project like approach(until you want to make a quick contribution). I bet lots of larger teams might prefer to grab a library of launchpad.
Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#32It's definitely annoying when you are trying to find the "canonical" fork of a project on Github, but it's not THAT hard to just look under the project name and click on the "forked from xyz/project" link (projects rarely go more than a couple of forks deep), or in the worst case click on the network tab and look at the tree. Edit: If it's a Ruby Gem, you can also look up the gem on rubygems.org and click the Homepag…
Anyone who's paying attention will update the readme in the stale fork to make it really obvious. People don't sometimes because they're lazy, but this is an application of the more general "people suck" rule, and not very specific to Github.
Oh, in the README? Duh. I totally didn't think of that awesome way to communicate to all the package management build systems out there that the repository has moved. I'll get right on building the Turing Oracle so I can solve that "README File English As Redirect" problem.
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#33As a middle ground, how does Google Code work? The project lives under its own name and has specific, transferrable maintainers, but pulling source code is very easy and it's easy to see changes as they come and go. On the other hand, GCode isn't based only around DVCS, so the fork model doesn't work as well.
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#34The last paragraph is making me think... "Really I think you need a 3rd system that's radically different." I think he's right. I'm not sure what that 3rd system would look like. I wonder if a meta-service piggybacking on both Github and Launchpad would work?
Well, I cooked up an idea: http://fmlr.me/ But, sort of got stuck at how to do the client. I've recently relearned GUI coding and will probably dust the idea off and try it again soon.
This is a superb concept. Would you subscribe to people or projects or both? Where would the user questions come from?
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#35It's not just Launchpad that's "SysAdmin" friendly. Sourceforge and Google Code are much closer to the Launchpad model than to Github's. I know Zed Shaw isn't saying one is better, but doesn't the popularity of Github compared these sites tell us something?
All its telling me is that I want a whole OS based on the Github model. I like the feel of working on github, I'd like to take the RVM/rubygems/github theme and extend it past Ruby, to the whole OS and its package manager.
You wonder how much sysadmin effort would be saved if they didn't have to deal with shared libraries between packages. Is it a case of the sysadmin practices not keeping up with the current abundance of disk space/ram or is there still a case for the efficiencies of the shared library model?
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#36As a sysadmin, I have to say that I hate Launchpad. I always have click many levels deep to find the thing I want. The interface just sucks. I also know plenty of other sysadmins who use github but find no value at all in Launchpad. Also: FWIW, I never notice folks' names on github. The important thing for me is that the code is right there front and center. If I want to download it, I click the clipboard button and…
> Also: FWIW, I never notice folks' names on github. The important thing for me is that the code is right there front and center. If I want to download it, I click the clipboard button and then go clone it. Boom. Yeah, I think "BOOM!" is right. If you can't see the flaw in stuff like this: http://drnicwilliams.com/2009/11/04/hacking-someones-gem-wit... http://groups.google.com/group/gemcutter/browse_thread/threa... T…
I see a number of things discussed in those links. Could you clarify which you're referring to?
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#37"Programmers don't care about version numbers, release history, bug trackers, mailing lists, nothing. Especially if the project is relatively small. Just the code please."
I disagree. Experienced programmers definitely care about bug trackers and version numbers. Once you get bitten by version skew or lose a day trying to reproduce a bug against a wrong version, you start to care about such things.
And small projects are just big project that haven't grown yet :)
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#38Good open source projects are projects, which are made up of code and people. I've never cared for the idea that a project belongs to one person on github.
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#39"Programmers don't care about version numbers, release history, bug trackers, mailing lists, nothing. Especially if the project is relatively small. Just the code please. " I disagree. Experienced programmers definitely care about bug trackers and version numbers. Once you get bitten by version skew or lose a day trying to reproduce a bug against a wrong version, you start to care about such things. And small project…
As a programmer using the code others publish on Github, I'm definitely interested in those, the more so when I want to contribute. Many project are sorely lacking a way to report and discuss (possible) bugs (bug tracker, mailing list, hell, an email address would be fine) and to figure out what version of the code contains what (release history/changelog and version numbers). However small, I find projects without those much harder to use and improve.
Re: Zed Shaw: Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder
#40"Programmers don't care about version numbers, release history, bug trackers, mailing lists, nothing. Especially if the project is relatively small. Just the code please. " I disagree. Experienced programmers definitely care about bug trackers and version numbers. Once you get bitten by version skew or lose a day trying to reproduce a bug against a wrong version, you start to care about such things. And small project…
As a programmer using the code others publish on Github, I'm definitely interested in those, the more so when I want to contribute . Many project are sorely lacking a way to report and discuss (possible) bugs (bug tracker, mailing list, hell, an email address would be fine) and to figure out what version of the code contains what (release history/changelog and version numbers). However small, I find projects without…
Yes - the administrative stuff is important when contributing. Bug tracker + versioning might save you effort in cases when the bug you found is already being worked on or maybe even has a fix waiting for release.