Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

live555.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#81

Post by astrodust »

tomjen3 wrote: post #45
hayd wrote: post #27

"As the software is open source, however, hobbyists are also free to use it, but to post to this mailing list, they are expected to demonstrate at least a minimal level of 'cluefulness' by using an email address with their own domain name - not just a generic "@gmail", "@yahoo", etc.-type email address." Makes sense.

Apparently I am no longer a 'clueful' user then. Makes me chokle. Nobody with a clue waste hours setting up their own email server when gmail can do it for you in a few minutes.

I have a Gmail hosted address at a personal domain. Took ten minutes to set up.

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#82

Post by un_ »

kazinator wrote: post #21

A source code repository lets me see what bugs you have fixed, and lets me do things like "git bisect" to discover the identity of the commit where you broke something six months ago that wasn't discovered because it's not covered by tests. Helping others find your bugs helps you. Anyone who is serious about any open source project today has a repository. Your bogus rationalizations sound like you haven't held a soft…

I have a source code repository for the code I write on my computer to track changes, and then I upload tar.xz's of the project for each "release". I can't see much benefit in opening a source code repository; if someone finds a bug, he can e-mail me a patch or even notify me about it.

Having a repository where many people can come and open issues puts a burden on my shoulders - I'll look at the page and see that I need to fix of issues, otherwise I'll look bad, or people will stop using my code.

Releasing my code in releases (so that everyone is on one release, or not on any release at all) means that I don't have to deal with people who've cloned the code half-way through the implementation of something large and complained that it won't run, or that it's full of bugs.

Releasing releases has been a solid model for me, especially as I work alone, or with a maximum of two or three other people at once.

If I was going to use a public repository, I think I'd end up using CVS.

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#83

Post by ciupicri »

lstamour wrote: post #77
ams6110 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, seeing .bak or .config or private key files, etc. accidentally pushed to github is not exactly uncommon.

.config sure, but .bak? That's what revision control software is for! :D

People can still add them accidentally to the repository unless they have configured properly .gitignore/.hgignore/... By the way GitHub has a repository of .gitignore files for various tools and languages [1].

[1]: https://github.com/github/gitignore

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#84

Post by SoMuchToGrok »

tomjen3 wrote: post #45
hayd wrote: post #27

"As the software is open source, however, hobbyists are also free to use it, but to post to this mailing list, they are expected to demonstrate at least a minimal level of 'cluefulness' by using an email address with their own domain name - not just a generic "@gmail", "@yahoo", etc.-type email address." Makes sense.

Apparently I am no longer a 'clueful' user then. Makes me chokle. Nobody with a clue waste hours setting up their own email server when gmail can do it for you in a few minutes.

Mailgun + Cloudflare + Gmail

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#85

Post by shiro »

un_ wrote: post #82
kazinator wrote: post #21

A source code repository lets me see what bugs you have fixed, and lets me do things like "git bisect" to discover the identity of the commit where you broke something six months ago that wasn't discovered because it's not covered by tests. Helping others find your bugs helps you. Anyone who is serious about any open source project today has a repository. Your bogus rationalizations sound like you haven't held a soft…

I have a source code repository for the code I write on my computer to track changes, and then I upload tar.xz's of the project for each "release". I can't see much benefit in opening a source code repository; if someone finds a bug, he can e-mail me a patch or even notify me about it. Having a repository where many people can come and open issues puts a burden on my shoulders - I'll look at the page and see that I n…

If it's a personal project, it's largely a matter of taste, I think. I did tarball-upload style myself before.

I just like to comment that having public repo doesn't necessarily mean you suddenly have to deal with issues piled up by others, although in recent trend repo providers do encourage that kind of open communication (On github, I can turn off issue tracker but I don't know how to turn off pull requests).

Even using private repo, you still get bug reports, feature requests and patches via email, or (worse) stumble upon a blog or tweet complaining something isn't working for somebody. The reason I moved to public repo for my projects was that I got tired of dealing with patches manually - sometimes people sent patches against the release which was already fixed in my repo or had conflict with HEAD; sometimes I couldn't reproduce the problem so I had to send provisional patches to the user reported a bug to check out if that would address the issue. With public repo, I could just say "give me a patch against HEAD" or "I push a potential fix on a branch so check it out". It's so much easier. But again, this all depends on what kind of feedback you're getting, or how often your releases are, etc.

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#86

Post by dvirsky »

oddevan wrote: post #79
dvirsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who still bothers to do that?

Every address I give out is one of my own domains. Mostly they redirect to my gmail account, but this way I can change to a different provider or suddenly spin up my own mail server and no one has to update their address book. Edit to add: My point not withstanding, yeah, that's an arbitrary "cluefullness" test.

I've never bothered. Hotmail or Yahoo email addresses were embarrassing back in the day, but I guess the hype around Gmail changed that 10 years ago. I've never felt awkward putting a gmail address on a business card.

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#88

Post by kazinator »

un_ wrote: post #82
kazinator wrote: post #21

A source code repository lets me see what bugs you have fixed, and lets me do things like "git bisect" to discover the identity of the commit where you broke something six months ago that wasn't discovered because it's not covered by tests. Helping others find your bugs helps you. Anyone who is serious about any open source project today has a repository. Your bogus rationalizations sound like you haven't held a soft…

I have a source code repository for the code I write on my computer to track changes, and then I upload tar.xz's of the project for each "release". I can't see much benefit in opening a source code repository; if someone finds a bug, he can e-mail me a patch or even notify me about it. Having a repository where many people can come and open issues puts a burden on my shoulders - I'll look at the page and see that I n…

> if someone finds a bug, he can e-mail me a patch or even notify me about it.

A source code repository can help someone find a bug more easily, and "preprocess" the bug report with more info for you, like "Hey, you broke such back on December 3, 2014---all you have to do is revert that commit's change to foo.c, and keep the other changes."

Users can run "blame" to find out which commit touched what line of any file.

Of course, you can debug a flat tarball, but it's sometimes better with the history. Particularly in cases when something previously used to work (users are running into a regression). If all they have is the previous release tarball and the new one, there are too many changes which could be responsible for the breakage.

> then I upload tar.xz's of the project for each "release".

All I do is push the release's git tag to my public repo, and the CGIT web front end automatically creates .tar.gz, .tar.bz2 and .zip download links for that tag:

  $ git tag frumly-widgets-2.3
  $ git push --tags
Done! Users can now download frumly-widgets-2.3.tar.gz straight out of the web front end.

> If I was going to use a public repository, I think I'd end up using CVS.

Thus, exposing a public version control repo is too uncool for old school, but if you use some unfashionably crappy old version control system, then it's acceptable.

Re: Why do you not make the code available under a 'source code repository'?

#90

Post by handsomecam »

dvirsky wrote: post #86
oddevan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every address I give out is one of my own domains. Mostly they redirect to my gmail account, but this way I can change to a different provider or suddenly spin up my own mail server and no one has to update their address book. Edit to add: My point not withstanding, yeah, that's an arbitrary "cluefullness" test.

I've never bothered. Hotmail or Yahoo email addresses were embarrassing back in the day, but I guess the hype around Gmail changed that 10 years ago. I've never felt awkward putting a gmail address on a business card.

You don't find that a gmail address on a business card conveys that it's a 1-2 person operation or very loosely organized? Given the low barrier to entry for setting up hosted email (google apps being $5/mo/user) I personally get the impression the person doesn't take their business seriously, on par with business cards with perforated edges from home printing.

I know my gut reaction when I get a (semi-)professional email from a gmail account is "ok.. what's the scam angle on this one?"

Post reply on HN