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> Homebrew requires the CLT on all but the latest version of macOS (to avoid copious workarounds in formulae) Why? What are these workarounds? The linked PR di

> Homebrew requires the CLT on all but the latest version of macOS (to avoid copious workarounds in formulae) Why? What are these workarounds? The linked PR didn't explain, and as someone who's still got one machine on 10.12 I'd really rather not have to keep CLT installed as well. Edit: Wow, the maintainer on that PR is a real jerk. He refused to answer a legitimate question (and locked the PR at the same time) because he thought the original (since edited) complaint of "The error message for this patch is terrible" was "rude". MikeMcQuaid, if you ever read this, this sort of behavior on your part is a great argument for ditching HomeBrew.

felixgallo 9y ago
Good luck writing your own version and supporting it. Be sure to post your progress.
- ManuelKiessling 9y ago
  I wish I could click this upvote triangle a million times.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    Or you could, like, do it. Things are easier these days with great CI tools, cloud stuff like CDNs, cheap storage and bandwidth, and FOSS sponsors. Scratching your own itch is something that can be worth being done at times. After all that's how Homebrew started, when people grew discontent of the complexity of MacPorts and Fink. There were dismissing words towards Homebrew back then too (like "wait till they have to do X").
- yazmeya 9y ago
  The implication is that having commit rights on a highly visible and popular open-source project somehow absolves the maintainer of the need for patience and civility. I would expect quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.
- eridius 9y ago
  Why would I write my own version? If I ditch Homebrew I'd just go back to MacPorts.
- gutnor 9y ago
  Ah, the passive-aggressive old school OSS defence. That's not an argument, that's basic herd mentality and can literally apply to any kind of critic legitimate or otherwise. Even Linus does not get a pass nowadays and there is really no reason on HN where we can be so critical of even the most minor design mistake.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    I think the parent's dismissal is unfortunate in its nonchalance, but ultimately is correct. Look, open source maintainers don't owe anyone anything. It behooves them to behave in a positive manner in order to encourage people to contribute, and, well, just because being nice tends to give you a good reputation. But that doesn't mean they're not still people. Sometimes they'll be curt or terse after someone asks a question about a decision that has already been beaten to death because they're just tired of talking about it. Maybe they just had an argument with a friend or family member and aren't in the best frame of mind. Maybe they're just having a bad day. And that's ok. That's just human nature. As long as the majority of interactions with users is positive, everything's going to be fine. A few people might get their feelings stepped on here and there, and that's truly unfortunate, but I'd also hope that those people give the maintainers the benefit of the doubt and recognize that one bad interaction should hopefully not sour all the positive value they've gotten out of the maintainer's work. Sure, if there's a huge pattern of abuse, that's a problem. But I submit that a one-off issue submitter is not qualified to assess if there's a pattern or not, especially right after they've just been rebuffed and still feel bad about it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jonchang 9y ago
Why is it necessary for people to be polite in the face of rudeness? Especially when the person expected to be polite is volunteering their time for you? To enlighten the polite people who have not insulted Homebrew maintainers: the issue with requiring the CLT on everything but the latest version of macOS is because of the horrible workarounds. Grep the Homebrew taps for "Xcode-only", "CLT.installed?", or "clock_gettime" for an idea of the amount of hacks required. I don't know precisely why this occurs but it's related to Apple only shipping the latest SDK in Xcode rather than one that matches the version of macOS that Xcode is running on.
- eridius 9y ago
  Saying "the error message is terrible" isn't particularly rude to begin with. And if you're having a one-on-one conversation with someone, saying "I think you're rude so I'm not going to answer your question" is one thing, but in a public forum, saying "You raise a valid question but I don't like how you phrased something so I'm going to explicitly refuse to answer the question, then lock the PR so nobody else can ask the question either, and screw anybody who actually wants to know the answer" is unacceptable. It's really user-hostile and makes me not want to use anything that maintainer is responsible for.
  - jonchang 9y ago
    It's not much of an argument to say "well, it's not really that rude". Is it generous and gracious to communicate with people despite their rudeness? Sure. But should it an obligation, particularly for an open-source maintainer? Absolutely not. Nor do I buy the "public forum" argument. You direct your writing to the audience you have (i.e., the person that asked you a question rudely), not an imagined audience that might be reading. "Lock the PR so nobody else can ask the question either, and screw anybody who actually wants to know the answer" is projecting; there's nothing about locking an issue that shuts down all conversations, just the one in the issue that is being discussed (that again, to emphasize, is a rude conversation anyway).
    - eridius 9y ago
woodruffw 9y ago
I'm the guy who originally made Homebrew independent of the CLT (GSoC 2015). macOS is a constantly moving target, and it's hard enough to get consistent behavior across multiple versions with the CLT installed. It's a losing battle that I've been fighting for the last 3 years, and it's one with diminishing returns (only a minority of Homebrew users don't want/need the CLT for other purposes anyways). Edit: As for PR, we get a lot of issues and PRs that amount to handling a 1% case at the cost of the 99% case. When we get those, we have to consider both to time cost to ourselves and the future maintenance cost. We could probably be a little less brusque about it, but the reality is that we don't have the kind of labor or resources necessary to support maintenance-heavy features like CLT-free installs on older macOS versions.
zachberger 9y ago
I had the same experience with MikeMcQuaid. I asked a question, he got offended, and then he locked the issue. I stopped participating in the community after this.
yashap 9y ago
Homebrew is an awesome, super useful piece of software that people put in tonnes of effort to maintain, for free. Your complaint was indeed worded rudely. Also, re: the “why” behind this commit, “to avoid copious workarounds in formulae” is already a pretty good description, I can see why he didn’t feel the need to elaborate. Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests, and don’t get paid to do so. If this commit is a big deal for you, just make the effort to bring it up in a nice, thoughtful way. Or, don’t use the software if you don’t like it/the maintainers.
- eridius 9y ago
  It wasn't my complaint. And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. > Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests Yeah, that's what happens with popular open source projects. Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community.
  - cakes 9y ago
    > the obligations he has to the community. There isn't an obligation though. You could fork or pick an alternative as much as a maintainer/owner can abandon a project. They aren't obligated to do anything for you and you aren't obligated to do anything for them. If you don't like a project because of personalities involved, avoid them. I have personally done this without problem. It can be a pain but I have no actual pull in the matter.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    > And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. Why do you feel that you're entitled to this information? And/or that providing this information is a good use of the maintainer's unpaid volunteer time (and that it's immediately obvious to the maintainer that it would be)? > Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. Homebrew is one such project. Empirically, they have an active community and sufficient contributions to keep the project robust and growing. That doesn't mean that they're going to be perfectly nice and polite to everyone, bending over backward to every user's whim. Sometimes someone is going to feel off-put as you have. But, clearly, most of the time people have positive experiences, so I'm sure they're satisfied with their performance. > ... doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community. The only obligations I expect from an OSS maintainer is that they won't be negligent or malicious -- that is, they will work hard to avoid catastrophic bugs that destroy data or open security holes. Even given that, I accept that those sorts of things may happen due to innocent mistakes. Beyond that, I pay nothing, so I expect nothing. This sort of thing reminds me of really the only negative I've experienced as an open source maintainer: users with feelings of entitlement.
mikemcquaid 9y ago
> Wow, the maintainer on that PR is a real jerk. He refused to answer a legitimate question (and locked the PR at the same time) because he thought the original (since edited) complaint of "The error message for this patch is terrible" was "rude". The commenting user in this case immediately opened another issue where they were rude to another maintainer too, had to be warned about their behaviour and (unlike most people who are warned) did not apologise. This issue was not locked. My work on Homebrew over the last 9 years has been almost entirely in my free time. That's time I'm not spending with my wife, friends, dog or (now) new baby. As my Twitter and GitHub bios point out: "I block rude people". I'm not interested in giving my free time to people who cannot be polite. The GitHub UI indicates whether someone is a first-time contributor, contributor or maintainer. You get cut proportionally more slack for having a bad day and being rude if you've contributed to Homebrew already. I try to be over-the-top positive for new contributors and I will immediately and genuinely gratefully accept apologies that are given. > MikeMcQuaid, if you ever read this, this sort of behavior on your part is a great argument for ditching HomeBrew. If you'd like to ditch Homebrew: please go ahead. There's things that MacPorts do better than we do and the MacPorts maintainers I know are good people. If you use Homebrew: you are the one who benefits, we do not. I want to build something that's useful but primarily maintaining Homebrew needs to be an enjoyable experience for me and others for it to be a sustainable project.
- lilyball 9y ago
  I just read zenspider's other issue. It's not rude. You and the other maintainer are. If I was on the fence before, I'm not now. Time to ditch Homebrew and stop recommending it to friends. You are poor stewards of the project and of your community.
sametmax 9y ago
Well it is rude so...
lilyball 9y ago
And now MikeMcQuaid has actually banned me (presumably from the whole organization) over this. Mike, I don't know what you think you're doing, but you threatened to ban zenspider simply because they asked to have their issue reopened, and you actually banned me because I pointed out that your behavior was unacceptable. I'd go so far as to say you're actually violating your own Code of Conduct, and if you had any sense whatsoever, you'd immediately stop interacting with the community and appoint someone else to handle all tickets from here on out.

felixgallo 9y ago

Good luck writing your own version and supporting it. Be sure to post your progress.

ManuelKiessling 9y ago
I wish I could click this upvote triangle a million times.
- lloeki 9y ago
  Or you could, like, do it. Things are easier these days with great CI tools, cloud stuff like CDNs, cheap storage and bandwidth, and FOSS sponsors. Scratching your own itch is something that can be worth being done at times. After all that's how Homebrew started, when people grew discontent of the complexity of MacPorts and Fink. There were dismissing words towards Homebrew back then too (like "wait till they have to do X").
yazmeya 9y ago
The implication is that having commit rights on a highly visible and popular open-source project somehow absolves the maintainer of the need for patience and civility. I would expect quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.
eridius 9y ago
Why would I write my own version? If I ditch Homebrew I'd just go back to MacPorts.
gutnor 9y ago
Ah, the passive-aggressive old school OSS defence. That's not an argument, that's basic herd mentality and can literally apply to any kind of critic legitimate or otherwise. Even Linus does not get a pass nowadays and there is really no reason on HN where we can be so critical of even the most minor design mistake.
- kelnos 9y ago
  I think the parent's dismissal is unfortunate in its nonchalance, but ultimately is correct. Look, open source maintainers don't owe anyone anything. It behooves them to behave in a positive manner in order to encourage people to contribute, and, well, just because being nice tends to give you a good reputation. But that doesn't mean they're not still people. Sometimes they'll be curt or terse after someone asks a question about a decision that has already been beaten to death because they're just tired of talking about it. Maybe they just had an argument with a friend or family member and aren't in the best frame of mind. Maybe they're just having a bad day. And that's ok. That's just human nature. As long as the majority of interactions with users is positive, everything's going to be fine. A few people might get their feelings stepped on here and there, and that's truly unfortunate, but I'd also hope that those people give the maintainers the benefit of the doubt and recognize that one bad interaction should hopefully not sour all the positive value they've gotten out of the maintainer's work. Sure, if there's a huge pattern of abuse, that's a problem. But I submit that a one-off issue submitter is not qualified to assess if there's a pattern or not, especially right after they've just been rebuffed and still feel bad about it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jonchang 9y ago

Why is it necessary for people to be polite in the face of rudeness? Especially when the person expected to be polite is volunteering their time for you? To enlighten the polite people who have not insulted Homebrew maintainers: the issue with requiring the CLT on everything but the latest version of macOS is because of the horrible workarounds. Grep the Homebrew taps for "Xcode-only", "CLT.installed?", or "clock_gettime" for an idea of the amount of hacks required. I don't know precisely why this occurs but it's related to Apple only shipping the latest SDK in Xcode rather than one that matches the version of macOS that Xcode is running on.

eridius 9y ago
Saying "the error message is terrible" isn't particularly rude to begin with. And if you're having a one-on-one conversation with someone, saying "I think you're rude so I'm not going to answer your question" is one thing, but in a public forum, saying "You raise a valid question but I don't like how you phrased something so I'm going to explicitly refuse to answer the question, then lock the PR so nobody else can ask the question either, and screw anybody who actually wants to know the answer" is unacceptable. It's really user-hostile and makes me not want to use anything that maintainer is responsible for.
- jonchang 9y ago
  It's not much of an argument to say "well, it's not really that rude". Is it generous and gracious to communicate with people despite their rudeness? Sure. But should it an obligation, particularly for an open-source maintainer? Absolutely not. Nor do I buy the "public forum" argument. You direct your writing to the audience you have (i.e., the person that asked you a question rudely), not an imagined audience that might be reading. "Lock the PR so nobody else can ask the question either, and screw anybody who actually wants to know the answer" is projecting; there's nothing about locking an issue that shuts down all conversations, just the one in the issue that is being discussed (that again, to emphasize, is a rude conversation anyway).
  - eridius 9y ago

woodruffw 9y ago

I'm the guy who originally made Homebrew independent of the CLT (GSoC 2015). macOS is a constantly moving target, and it's hard enough to get consistent behavior across multiple versions with the CLT installed. It's a losing battle that I've been fighting for the last 3 years, and it's one with diminishing returns (only a minority of Homebrew users don't want/need the CLT for other purposes anyways). Edit: As for PR, we get a lot of issues and PRs that amount to handling a 1% case at the cost of the 99% case. When we get those, we have to consider both to time cost to ourselves and the future maintenance cost. We could probably be a little less brusque about it, but the reality is that we don't have the kind of labor or resources necessary to support maintenance-heavy features like CLT-free installs on older macOS versions.

zachberger 9y ago

I had the same experience with MikeMcQuaid. I asked a question, he got offended, and then he locked the issue. I stopped participating in the community after this.

yashap 9y ago

Homebrew is an awesome, super useful piece of software that people put in tonnes of effort to maintain, for free. Your complaint was indeed worded rudely. Also, re: the “why” behind this commit, “to avoid copious workarounds in formulae” is already a pretty good description, I can see why he didn’t feel the need to elaborate. Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests, and don’t get paid to do so. If this commit is a big deal for you, just make the effort to bring it up in a nice, thoughtful way. Or, don’t use the software if you don’t like it/the maintainers.

eridius 9y ago
It wasn't my complaint. And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. > Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests Yeah, that's what happens with popular open source projects. Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community.
- cakes 9y ago
  > the obligations he has to the community. There isn't an obligation though. You could fork or pick an alternative as much as a maintainer/owner can abandon a project. They aren't obligated to do anything for you and you aren't obligated to do anything for them. If you don't like a project because of personalities involved, avoid them. I have personally done this without problem. It can be a pain but I have no actual pull in the matter.
- kelnos 9y ago
  > And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. Why do you feel that you're entitled to this information? And/or that providing this information is a good use of the maintainer's unpaid volunteer time (and that it's immediately obvious to the maintainer that it would be)? > Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. Homebrew is one such project. Empirically, they have an active community and sufficient contributions to keep the project robust and growing. That doesn't mean that they're going to be perfectly nice and polite to everyone, bending over backward to every user's whim. Sometimes someone is going to feel off-put as you have. But, clearly, most of the time people have positive experiences, so I'm sure they're satisfied with their performance. > ... doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community. The only obligations I expect from an OSS maintainer is that they won't be negligent or malicious -- that is, they will work hard to avoid catastrophic bugs that destroy data or open security holes. Even given that, I accept that those sorts of things may happen due to innocent mistakes. Beyond that, I pay nothing, so I expect nothing. This sort of thing reminds me of really the only negative I've experienced as an open source maintainer: users with feelings of entitlement.

mikemcquaid 9y ago

> Wow, the maintainer on that PR is a real jerk. He refused to answer a legitimate question (and locked the PR at the same time) because he thought the original (since edited) complaint of "The error message for this patch is terrible" was "rude". The commenting user in this case immediately opened another issue where they were rude to another maintainer too, had to be warned about their behaviour and (unlike most people who are warned) did not apologise. This issue was not locked. My work on Homebrew over the last 9 years has been almost entirely in my free time. That's time I'm not spending with my wife, friends, dog or (now) new baby. As my Twitter and GitHub bios point out: "I block rude people". I'm not interested in giving my free time to people who cannot be polite. The GitHub UI indicates whether someone is a first-time contributor, contributor or maintainer. You get cut proportionally more slack for having a bad day and being rude if you've contributed to Homebrew already. I try to be over-the-top positive for new contributors and I will immediately and genuinely gratefully accept apologies that are given. > MikeMcQuaid, if you ever read this, this sort of behavior on your part is a great argument for ditching HomeBrew. If you'd like to ditch Homebrew: please go ahead. There's things that MacPorts do better than we do and the MacPorts maintainers I know are good people. If you use Homebrew: you are the one who benefits, we do not. I want to build something that's useful but primarily maintaining Homebrew needs to be an enjoyable experience for me and others for it to be a sustainable project.

lilyball 9y ago
I just read zenspider's other issue. It's not rude. You and the other maintainer are. If I was on the fence before, I'm not now. Time to ditch Homebrew and stop recommending it to friends. You are poor stewards of the project and of your community.

sametmax 9y ago

Well it is rude so...

lilyball 9y ago

And now MikeMcQuaid has actually banned me (presumably from the whole organization) over this. Mike, I don't know what you think you're doing, but you threatened to ban zenspider simply because they asked to have their issue reopened, and you actually banned me because I pointed out that your behavior was unacceptable. I'd go so far as to say you're actually violating your own Code of Conduct, and if you had any sense whatsoever, you'd immediately stop interacting with the community and appoint someone else to handle all tickets from here on out.