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I’ve been following sh for a bit now, but I haven’t figured out what the differentiator is between it, and say, GitHub or GitLab. Obviously the UI design is dif

by elamje 7y ago

I’ve been following sh for a bit now, but I haven’t figured out what the differentiator is between it, and say, GitHub or GitLab. Obviously the UI design is different, but what are people loving about it on a day to day basis compared to the big two competitors? Any personal experience or comments from Drew would be appreciated:-)

scrollaway 7y ago
The one IMO defining feature it has that the gitlhabs don't have is mailing lists. This used to be one of my #1 feature requests on Github years ago.
- elamje 7y ago
  This might age me, but I would like to know what you like about mailing lists compared to the UI of GitHub. What’s the selling point for mailing lists vs real time threads? I see a cult of people that like mailing lists and google groups, but I don’t quite understand how it’s more pleasant to use than modern UI’s. Any opinion on this?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
    There are lots and lots of reasons, but one advantage that comes to mind is that you're entirely in control of the data, you can just take your mail spool and leave for greener pastures whenever you want. You don't even need an export process, you already have all of the emails in your archive.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    > This might age me, but I would like to know what you like about mailing lists compared to the UI of GitHub. Me personally, nothing. This might age me but at the time I was requesting this, Github barely had an issue tracker :) Now it has group discussions which are… better than nothing. And the world moved on to real time chat apps anyway. But I still wish a project by default would get a "forum" which you can send emails to, eg. torvalds.linux@lists.github.io. This is not useful for tiny offshoot projects, but it's super useful for mid-sized open source orgs that would want a discussion/feedback area for users without polluting the issue tracker. With controls for moderation, access, etc. Markdown integration. And so on. What I mean is, just because it has an email input/output doesn't mean it only has to have that. You can still have nice UIs compatible with well-established protocols.
ddevault 7y ago
Off the top of my head, some things that people tell me they like include: - The CI service, which distinguishes itself by being based on virtual machines instead of Docker, thus supporting foreign kernels like BSD and other cool things Docker can't do - The lightweight design and lack of JavaScript - The business model (see latest blog post on sourcehut.org) - There's no proprietary enterprise version, everything is 100% bona-fide free-as-in-freedom software - You don't need an account to participate, you can send patchsets and file bugs via email - Pretty much the only good hosted Mercurial service
- elamje 7y ago
  Cool. Those are definitely useful and interesting. I don’t think I’ve been enough of a GitX power user to need some of those yet, but I’m sure the day will come. I appreciate the no JavaScript these days! I like rich UI’s but I appreciate the minimalism and trying to do cool stuff with just HTML and css. How were you inspired to tackle this particular project?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
    The same reason I start all of my projects: it didn't exist and I thought it ought to, so I made it.
    - spectramax 7y ago
      How did you get first users to sign up on SH?
      - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
        I generally use my blog to announce new projects: https://drewdevault.com https://drewdevault.com I'd been talking about SourceHut here and there in passing in various blog posts, and reaching out to people to invite them to a private alpha in the months leading up to the public alpha, then the service was somewhat seeded when the public alpha announcement went up: https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availabilit...

by elamje 7y ago

scrollaway 7y ago

The one IMO defining feature it has that the gitlhabs don't have is mailing lists. This used to be one of my #1 feature requests on Github years ago.

elamje 7y ago
This might age me, but I would like to know what you like about mailing lists compared to the UI of GitHub. What’s the selling point for mailing lists vs real time threads? I see a cult of people that like mailing lists and google groups, but I don’t quite understand how it’s more pleasant to use than modern UI’s. Any opinion on this?
- Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  There are lots and lots of reasons, but one advantage that comes to mind is that you're entirely in control of the data, you can just take your mail spool and leave for greener pastures whenever you want. You don't even need an export process, you already have all of the emails in your archive.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  > This might age me, but I would like to know what you like about mailing lists compared to the UI of GitHub. Me personally, nothing. This might age me but at the time I was requesting this, Github barely had an issue tracker :) Now it has group discussions which are… better than nothing. And the world moved on to real time chat apps anyway. But I still wish a project by default would get a "forum" which you can send emails to, eg. torvalds.linux@lists.github.io. This is not useful for tiny offshoot projects, but it's super useful for mid-sized open source orgs that would want a discussion/feedback area for users without polluting the issue tracker. With controls for moderation, access, etc. Markdown integration. And so on. What I mean is, just because it has an email input/output doesn't mean it only has to have that. You can still have nice UIs compatible with well-established protocols.

ddevault 7y ago

Off the top of my head, some things that people tell me they like include: - The CI service, which distinguishes itself by being based on virtual machines instead of Docker, thus supporting foreign kernels like BSD and other cool things Docker can't do - The lightweight design and lack of JavaScript - The business model (see latest blog post on sourcehut.org) - There's no proprietary enterprise version, everything is 100% bona-fide free-as-in-freedom software - You don't need an account to participate, you can send patchsets and file bugs via email - Pretty much the only good hosted Mercurial service

elamje 7y ago
Cool. Those are definitely useful and interesting. I don’t think I’ve been enough of a GitX power user to need some of those yet, but I’m sure the day will come. I appreciate the no JavaScript these days! I like rich UI’s but I appreciate the minimalism and trying to do cool stuff with just HTML and css. How were you inspired to tackle this particular project?
- Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  The same reason I start all of my projects: it didn't exist and I thought it ought to, so I made it.
  - spectramax 7y ago
    How did you get first users to sign up on SH?
    - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
      I generally use my blog to announce new projects: https://drewdevault.com https://drewdevault.com I'd been talking about SourceHut here and there in passing in various blog posts, and reaching out to people to invite them to a private alpha in the months leading up to the public alpha, then the service was somewhat seeded when the public alpha announcement went up: https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availabilit...