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It's really astonishing to see all the recent drama around GitHub/GitLab. Hard to believe those are multibillion dollar companies when their entire existence ca

by xamuel 7y ago

It's really astonishing to see all the recent drama around GitHub/GitLab. Hard to believe those are multibillion dollar companies when their entire existence can be summed up as "Filling in some gaps in git". Like, if Linus Torvalds would just dedicate a few months and build that functionality directly into git, both those companies' value propositions would fall off the face of the earth. Edit: I mean, their value propositions to internal teams would disappear. They would still have value as social networks and as centralized hosting.

excalibur 7y ago
GitHub is like half social network and half hosting service. I don't see these as features that should or could be built into git itself.
np_tedious 7y ago
Idk if "gaps" is fair. Building a web UI into git would go quite against the "do one thing well" unix philosophy. And even then, hosting services would still be a thing
- phonethrowaway 7y ago
  But git already has a built in webserver... https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb
  - obituary_latte 7y ago
    TIL! Thanks! Interesting, though, that it doesn't appear to work with MacOS built-in apache (webrick works fine though).
    - tinix 7y ago
      Can you run it with python's built in http server? That's native on all OSX installs. I believe OSX ships with Python2 by default, right? https://docs.python.org/2/library/cgihttpserver.html https://docs.python.org/2/library/cgihttpserver.html Hmm...
      - obituary_latte 7y ago
        Yup MacOS ships with python. I didn’t try a python server since the ruby webrick server worked fine I just found it curious Apache didn’t work since it also ships in the OS.
  - rkuykendall-com 7y ago
    The fact that this is news to people here is confirmation that it was a mistake.
    - recursive 7y ago
      Are all HN stories about mistakes?
    - tinix 7y ago
      I disagree, the fact that it's news to people here means people don't know their tools as well as one might assume. Implying that it's a mistake because people don't know about it is very odd. Clearly, I know about it, as do others. It's been possible for 10+ years to serve git repos using gitweb, and mercurial repos using hgweb. We did this in like 2007-2009ish, locally, in our LAN, among developers... because our code couldn't be pushed to a third party for... reasons. Eventually I did setup our own internal SSH server to serve the repos, but for quick browsing of a team's repo state, using the built in HTTP server is just fine.
  - np_tedious 7y ago
    I definitely did not know that. Thanks!
  - tinix 7y ago
    Yes! This has been there for over a decade! And since there have been hundreds of alternative UI tools that build upon this same tooling. How are people here saying they've never heard of this? Oof... Typical developers, not even familiar with their tools.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
sneak 7y ago
Social networks are not popular because of their tech stacks or their codebase being written. There are already several open source git frontends, GitLab included. Social networks are popular because of their userbase and the ease of discovering other users and code. There is nothing you can build into a piece of client software that enables that.
- cma 7y ago
  p2p and trust networks, but it has never been pulled off
saagarjha 7y ago
I’m not sure. Git has proven that however good its core model might be, it’s pretty bad at putting a UI over it.
naringas 7y ago
> both those companies' value propositions would fall off the face of the earth. what do you think are their value propositions? I think they biggest part of their value proposition has to do with a centralized git repository as a service. The centralized part is really important for most companies. To the point that many git users don't really understand it's decentralized nature.
- xamuel 7y ago
  To me, the primary value propositions are: issues, merge requests, comments on issues and merge requests, related stuff like tags/milestones/etc., and the ability to expose this stuff in a friendly way to project managers who don't use the commandline. I guess since my team uses a self-hosted instance of GitLab, I'm biased and don't put any value on the social network aspect or the hosting aspect.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    You could get these things by running a Phabricator istance - not much reason to pay for GitLab self-hosted version unless you really care about the support aspect and some of tgeir enterprise-focused niche features.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
What an odd suggestion. Git follows the Unix philosophy of being designed to do one thing and do it well (concurrent version control). Building an issue tracker and more directly into it just doesn't make sense.
- woodrowbarlow 7y ago
  perhaps, but building a suite of tools that work together (but can still work individually) would not go against that philosophy.
hos234 7y ago
Nothing happens in few months with one guy. Even if it's Linus Torvolds. There are 1300 contributors to the project - https://github.com/git/git https://github.com/git/git
kerng 7y ago
I think you are misrepresenting what Github actually is.

by xamuel 7y ago

excalibur 7y ago

GitHub is like half social network and half hosting service. I don't see these as features that should or could be built into git itself.

np_tedious 7y ago

Idk if "gaps" is fair. Building a web UI into git would go quite against the "do one thing well" unix philosophy. And even then, hosting services would still be a thing

phonethrowaway 7y ago
But git already has a built in webserver... https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb
- obituary_latte 7y ago
  TIL! Thanks! Interesting, though, that it doesn't appear to work with MacOS built-in apache (webrick works fine though).
  - tinix 7y ago
    Can you run it with python's built in http server? That's native on all OSX installs. I believe OSX ships with Python2 by default, right? https://docs.python.org/2/library/cgihttpserver.html https://docs.python.org/2/library/cgihttpserver.html Hmm...
    - obituary_latte 7y ago
      Yup MacOS ships with python. I didn’t try a python server since the ruby webrick server worked fine I just found it curious Apache didn’t work since it also ships in the OS.
- rkuykendall-com 7y ago
  The fact that this is news to people here is confirmation that it was a mistake.
  - recursive 7y ago
    Are all HN stories about mistakes?
  - tinix 7y ago
    I disagree, the fact that it's news to people here means people don't know their tools as well as one might assume. Implying that it's a mistake because people don't know about it is very odd. Clearly, I know about it, as do others. It's been possible for 10+ years to serve git repos using gitweb, and mercurial repos using hgweb. We did this in like 2007-2009ish, locally, in our LAN, among developers... because our code couldn't be pushed to a third party for... reasons. Eventually I did setup our own internal SSH server to serve the repos, but for quick browsing of a team's repo state, using the built in HTTP server is just fine.
- np_tedious 7y ago
  I definitely did not know that. Thanks!
- tinix 7y ago
  Yes! This has been there for over a decade! And since there have been hundreds of alternative UI tools that build upon this same tooling. How are people here saying they've never heard of this? Oof... Typical developers, not even familiar with their tools.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sneak 7y ago

Social networks are not popular because of their tech stacks or their codebase being written. There are already several open source git frontends, GitLab included. Social networks are popular because of their userbase and the ease of discovering other users and code. There is nothing you can build into a piece of client software that enables that.

cma 7y ago
p2p and trust networks, but it has never been pulled off

saagarjha 7y ago

I’m not sure. Git has proven that however good its core model might be, it’s pretty bad at putting a UI over it.

naringas 7y ago

> both those companies' value propositions would fall off the face of the earth. what do you think are their value propositions? I think they biggest part of their value proposition has to do with a centralized git repository as a service. The centralized part is really important for most companies. To the point that many git users don't really understand it's decentralized nature.

xamuel 7y ago
To me, the primary value propositions are: issues, merge requests, comments on issues and merge requests, related stuff like tags/milestones/etc., and the ability to expose this stuff in a friendly way to project managers who don't use the commandline. I guess since my team uses a self-hosted instance of GitLab, I'm biased and don't put any value on the social network aspect or the hosting aspect.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  You could get these things by running a Phabricator istance - not much reason to pay for GitLab self-hosted version unless you really care about the support aspect and some of tgeir enterprise-focused niche features.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

What an odd suggestion. Git follows the Unix philosophy of being designed to do one thing and do it well (concurrent version control). Building an issue tracker and more directly into it just doesn't make sense.

woodrowbarlow 7y ago
perhaps, but building a suite of tools that work together (but can still work individually) would not go against that philosophy.

hos234 7y ago

Nothing happens in few months with one guy. Even if it's Linus Torvolds. There are 1300 contributors to the project - https://github.com/git/git https://github.com/git/git

kerng 7y ago

I think you are misrepresenting what Github actually is.