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SDL Moves to GitHub

discourse.libsdl.org

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Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#71

Post by oblio »

colechristensen wrote: post #21
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…

>This seems to sum up the biggest pain point that drives people away from OSS. Not knowledge, not skill, not price, but the total experience of a nice piece of software that lets you get the work you actually want to get done... done. This is why I continue to be fascinated by FreeBSD, I don't use it for much but when I do, what I'm trying to do almost always works right out of the box. My point is that is all comes…

What are you using FreeBSD for? I imagine it's quite good at some things, but isn't that range kind of limited? You need to have the precise set of hardware that's well supported and then use it for precisely the thing it supports well.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#72

Post by nuritzi »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #16
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…

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

Thanks, @PurpleFoxy! I tend to agree with @Fileeditview about the network effect and how GitHub has done a great job of helping OSS projects with visibility.

Like john_cogs, I'm also a GitLab team member, and am part of the Community Relations team. I run the GitLab for Open Source program. I joined about a year ago and am really impressed by how fast GitLab moves forward. We have a lot of awesome stuff coming up to make the product, and our community, even better.

With a release each month, we use our momentum to make big strides in the DevSecOps space -- so people can rest assured that we'll keep improving quickly! We like to build along with our users, and believe everyone can contribute to our product roadmap, and all aspects of our company (e.g. see https://about.gitlab.com/direction/).

For OSS projects considering a move, check out this GitHub vs GitLab Decision Kit: https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab/decis... It outlines some of the key points to consider when evaluating a move.

I'm also happy to answer any questions about the GitLab for Open Source program john_cogs mentioned below (https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/). It's a great deal in that OSS projects get 50,000 CI minutes for free along with our top tier in SaaS or self-managed. Feel free to reach out to opensource@gitlab.com with any questions!

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#73

Post by encom »

stu2b50 wrote: post #66
encom wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm curious, what is the threat model? For SDL, for example, what's the nightmare scenario with Github and Microsoft?

Why engage with a company that have proven themselves to be an enemy of Free Software? I'm not buying their "how do you do, fellow Linux users" facade.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#74

Post by Person5478 »

simonw wrote: post #65
pdw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, even at the time of GitHub's founding Git was already the clear winner. Think about it, why did GitHub feel safe launching with only Git support, while its competitors (Google Code, Bitbucket, SourceForge) had support for multiple VCSs?

Disagree. Git wasn't the clear winner when GitHub launched - and in fact the entire category of distributed version control was still proving itself. I remember the GitHub team investing huge amounts of effort into convincing people to use git and teaching them how to do it - one of the four co-founders (Scott) was dedicated to that effort full-time.

git was the clear winner when github released.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#75

Post by oblio »

eikenberry wrote: post #38
jmercouris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better UI. Git won because of the influence of the Linux kernel developers, that's all.

If I remember correctly Mercurial also made some dubious decisions early on (which they later reversed) that hurt adoption, like no in-repo branches and no ability to change history.

> no ability to change history.

This is a version control misfeature/bad practice.

It's almost the single version control system that has it as part of its regular commands (though others allow it, generally as part of an admin set of permissions and usually with super clear warnings not to do it).

And it's far from a reason why git won. Git won because it was written by Torvalds and every script kiddie dreams to be a Linux kernel hacker and because the Facebook for Code, Github, took off and it was based on git.

Heck, I'd "accuse" you of rewriting history right now :-))

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#76

Post by infogulch »

d1zzy wrote: post #12
talhah wrote: post #3

I've never heard of mercurial until this post, I've been using git for version control and it does the job really well. To those who use mercurial over git, why?

Seems to be popular at Facebook.[1] Where I work Mercurial has been an option for some time now (no Git unfortunately) and coming from Git I must say I really love how it does some of its things: - hg split: split a commit into as many different commits as you like using an interactive patch editor (you can fold/collapse hunks, can edit them textually, can select which lines of the hunk should be applied). It will au…

Of course, you could do these same things with git if you just recite this or that obscure sequence of ~~shell commands~~ demonic rituals. These are common and reasonable things for vcs users to want to do, and gits ux for them is a steaming pile.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#77

Post by stu2b50 »

encom wrote: post #73
stu2b50 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what is the threat model? For SDL, for example, what's the nightmare scenario with Github and Microsoft?

Why engage with a company that have proven themselves to be an enemy of Free Software? I'm not buying their "how do you do, fellow Linux users" facade.

So, to ask again, what is a specific way that choosing Github and Microsoft can hurt a software project in the future?

I'm not asking in bad faith here. If there are such dangerous I would very much like to know them.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#78

Post by ketzo »

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…

I think there's a certain "hacker cred" that comes from using really user-unfriendly software. And that's cool, but at some point OSS communities are starting to realize that "ease of use" is a hugely important quality. If they don't, they won't keep up with closed-source alternatives, end of sentence.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#79

Post by oblio »

dialamac wrote: post #15
jmercouris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better UI. Git won because of the influence of the Linux kernel developers, that's all.

I mean git is wildly popular because of GitHub, and probably that was something to do with it in the Rails community... a community that if anything is culturally the opposite of the kernel dev community (or at least very different). I don’t think any kernel dev influence had to do with it, even though it’s often stated as a fact.

It did. Torvalds had (has?) a lot of pull in dev circles, he's a sort of archetypal Dev Evangelist. Though I agree Github was the main reason. They polished the git experience and then promoted their platform a ton, which brought git with it.

Re: SDL Moves to GitHub

#80

Post by qbasic_forever »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #44

This is poignant for me, for reasons that have nothing to do with the technical merits of git vs mercurial, or github/Microsoft specifically as a company. > It’s not just Bugzilla. It’s the wiki, the mailing lists, the quaint little Mercurial web interface. The little open source thing that we rely on but no one is working on and probably has security holes in it. It’s all janky, and it causes developer friction. It…

You don't have to compete with hosted systems that have dedicated teams of developers and operations shipping features though. Linus Torvalds manages the development of the entire Linux kernel (millions of lines of code, thousands of contributors) with just an email client, text editor, and git CLI.

I will say too don't expect these hosted services to free you of operations burden. On the contrary you're even less connected and more at risk of operations burdens when these hosted services are facing issues. When Github actions CI/CD is acting up, or the hubot issue manager isn't working, or the release artifact store doesn't have the bits you expect, etc. your entire project grinds to a halt and it's not easy (by design) to eject out and work around them. Projects that depend heavily on all these hosted services are going to find over time that they need to buffer and insulate themselves from these centralized, single points of failure. It's just a different kind of operations burden.

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