5 ms·

That's great, but I'm still slowly moving my projects over to Github. 1. I get much more engagement from random developers on Github. On Github, random people

by shazow 15y ago

That's great, but I'm still slowly moving my projects over to Github. 1. I get much more engagement from random developers on Github. On Github, random people will fork and add features, do code reviews and leave comments. All of these things are technically possible on Google Code but nobody does it—probably due to the usability but possibly also a cultural problem. Github has a strong culture of collaboration because they strongly emphasize it in the user's experience. 2. Managing forks and pull requests is easier on Github. I want my life as a maintainer to be as easy as possible. 3. Notifications: For a long time, Google Code notifications simply didn't work for me, at all. I'd randomly stumble on one of my older projects and noticed 5 new issues opened that I didn't know about, I felt like I betrayed my users for 6+ months. Now they seem like they do, but some trust has been lost. 4. Multiple choices of documentation markup on Github is appealing. 5. The code browsing feature on Google Code feels like its own application. When you open a Github project, first thing you see is the code. On Google Code it takes 2 more clicks (that's 1 more click than Bitbucket). Think about what's the most important thing here—the code, and Github got it right. As far as version control goes, I'm happy with either Git or Mercurial.

sussman 15y ago
(Speaking purely for myself here.) I agree the code is important, but I think a cohesive project is more important. Github presents itself as a giant pastebin for code, with "projects" bolted on. Google Code presents projects first, and puts the code at an even level with every other part: bugtracker, downloads, wiki. (That said, I agree pull requests would be cool.)
- gte910h 15y ago
  While I agree with you on the facts of projects vs code, I actually LOVE that the PROJECT isn't on github. It makes the wily nilly use/patches from 3rd parties so much easier. It makes Google Code feel a little too sourceforgey.
- andos 15y ago
  That's the problem with Google Code, in my opinion. It tries to be both a landing page and a project manager for my software when I'd rather take care of the former myself. It ends up sucking at both, unfortunately.
  - nolliesnom 15y ago
    check your .html files in to your repo and serve them from projectname.googlecode.com. You can even set your project homepage to redirect there automatically if you are clever.
    - jjm 15y ago
      Same can be done on github. I can even do a cname redirect on a bare domain. When a user thus opts for this functionality what then is the differential factor in comparing it to GitHub?
      - nolliesnom 15y ago
        very little, clearly. both can host project homepages in a variety of ways. GC gives you a navigable and clean and usable project landing page by default, while github makes you work a bit harder. neither service prevents you from doing what you want, but if you care about your non-developer users, you'll find better conversions using google code. fact. to the OPs point, there is no reason why you can't make your GC project page have more content for developers. it is a wiki. everybody loves wikis. the OP of this thread is clearly trolling, though.
        jjm 15y ago
        I think I'm going to make a module to help people with GitHub repos create a friendlier layout for non-developers.
- jjm 15y ago
  - Basically the front page of any google project is like the readme in github or bitbucket. Some repos use github pages for a full site. This makes it like a google code site and better as you can actually host content. -Issues? Github has that. -Wiki? Same. I don't see anything feature wise that Google brings to the table that GitHub or Bitbucket doesn't out of the box or manually with even greater control. I really want to understand what the issues are, help me understand.
  - nolliesnom 15y ago
    my take on it is that gc is better at running long-lived projects or projects with non-developer users. github is great, but its emphasis is strictly on coding and dvcs. i've run svn gc projects, and projects on github, and found the gc stack to be generally more robust, cohesive, flexible, and methodically designed. ex: compare the rich functionality of the gc issue tracker to github and you'll find them incomparable. or, create a project and browse the "advanced" tab of your project and you'll probably find you have more control than it feels like, with little effort. regarding "can actually host content" - prolly a red herring because both let you host content. they just present a different ui for it.
    - mnutt 15y ago
      I think what he means is that you can actually design a site for your project and host it on Github. For example: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ Are there any non-google sites that do this on google code? As far as I can tell, all of them look like this: http://code.google.com/p/waf/ http://code.google.com/p/waf/ Which is fine, but I'd hardly say that a new user would find that less daunting than the Homebrew page. There's a lot going on, and it's trying to cater to both people who want to use waf and people who want to work on waf.
      - nolliesnom 15y ago
        yes, you can actually design a site for your project and host it on google code. directing your users to the gc-provided default is your choice. the contents of your repositories are hosted available at projectname.googlecode.com, and you can serve HTML just like you can code. example: http://json-template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/On-Design-Minimalism.html http://json-template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/On-Design-... the urls are not as nice but github's aren't great either.
- eliben 15y ago
  Agreed, and yet implementing the features that make Github (& Bitbucket) what it is doesn't sound terribly difficult, and most importantly won't ruin the other "project-y" features of Google code. Personally my projects are still on Google code, but Github is becoming more and more tempting.
CrLf 15y ago
Why doesn't anyone ever think about the users? You know, the ones that just want to grab some binaries and do stuff? In the "old days", projects would have a webpage with some instructions, screenshots and downloadable binaries. The effort required to do this would pay off in terms of polish and would attract more users. Today, people find out about this supposedly nice piece of software, and proceed to find only a source file listing, no documentation (not even a half-decent README), no screenshots and, worst of all, the need to build from source. I'm a technical person with a fair amount of curiosity for these things, and I find myself frequently bummed out and give up when I see a link to github. Even when these "artifacts" exist, just the look of the site is enough to put regular users off. Sharing code is not only about dumping a source tree online. It's about polishing all that surrounds it and makes it a "product". Without users a source tree has no value. Frankly, the current situation is making the open-source community more and more closed in on itself. The first step for irrelevance.
- luigi 15y ago
  I've never seen this. Any concrete examples?
  - CrLf 15y ago
    Any project on github. Put yourself in the shoes of a user that doesn't want to donwnload source. He lands on a github project page and just gives up. For a regular user (where "regular" depends on the type of software and the technical skill it requires), this is going way back to the days of source sharing on Usenet, way before the open-source term was mainstream (or even coined).
    - luigi 15y ago
      Why would someone go to GitHub if they don't want to download source code? Please, an example.
      - stock_toaster 15y ago
        I agree, and to go further, even _if_ a non-developer did on github (maybe higher in the search rankings), for many popular projects you can generally find the consumer facing url via the "homepage" link. Example: https://github.com/rack/rack https://github.com/rack/rack homepage url points to http://rack.rubyforge.org/ http://rack.rubyforge.org/ https://github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri https://github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri => http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew => http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ https://github.com/joyent/node https://github.com/joyent/node => http://nodejs.org/ http://nodejs.org/ etc, etc. It also seems fairly common to put the 'consumer' url near the top or bottom of the README.
pstadler 15y ago
I think the strength of GitHub is lying in it's focus on code. And that's the point of a code hosting website, isn't it? You visit a GitHub repository... what's the first thing you see? Instead of a blank page with some numbers and a project summary you're directly looking at the core of every project: its code. The presentation of the readme file is just one more thing which speaks for GitHub. Your project summary is integrated into the actual process of development because it's a part of it. Plus, you really get this feeling of activity while browsing projects and code on GitHub. Google Code and SourceForge seem so abandoned in comparison.

by shazow 15y ago

sussman 15y ago

(Speaking purely for myself here.) I agree the code is important, but I think a cohesive project is more important. Github presents itself as a giant pastebin for code, with "projects" bolted on. Google Code presents projects first, and puts the code at an even level with every other part: bugtracker, downloads, wiki. (That said, I agree pull requests would be cool.)

gte910h 15y ago
While I agree with you on the facts of projects vs code, I actually LOVE that the PROJECT isn't on github. It makes the wily nilly use/patches from 3rd parties so much easier. It makes Google Code feel a little too sourceforgey.
andos 15y ago
That's the problem with Google Code, in my opinion. It tries to be both a landing page and a project manager for my software when I'd rather take care of the former myself. It ends up sucking at both, unfortunately.
- nolliesnom 15y ago
  check your .html files in to your repo and serve them from projectname.googlecode.com. You can even set your project homepage to redirect there automatically if you are clever.
  - jjm 15y ago
    Same can be done on github. I can even do a cname redirect on a bare domain. When a user thus opts for this functionality what then is the differential factor in comparing it to GitHub?
    - nolliesnom 15y ago
      very little, clearly. both can host project homepages in a variety of ways. GC gives you a navigable and clean and usable project landing page by default, while github makes you work a bit harder. neither service prevents you from doing what you want, but if you care about your non-developer users, you'll find better conversions using google code. fact. to the OPs point, there is no reason why you can't make your GC project page have more content for developers. it is a wiki. everybody loves wikis. the OP of this thread is clearly trolling, though.
      - jjm 15y ago
        I think I'm going to make a module to help people with GitHub repos create a friendlier layout for non-developers.
jjm 15y ago
- Basically the front page of any google project is like the readme in github or bitbucket. Some repos use github pages for a full site. This makes it like a google code site and better as you can actually host content. -Issues? Github has that. -Wiki? Same. I don't see anything feature wise that Google brings to the table that GitHub or Bitbucket doesn't out of the box or manually with even greater control. I really want to understand what the issues are, help me understand.
- nolliesnom 15y ago
  my take on it is that gc is better at running long-lived projects or projects with non-developer users. github is great, but its emphasis is strictly on coding and dvcs. i've run svn gc projects, and projects on github, and found the gc stack to be generally more robust, cohesive, flexible, and methodically designed. ex: compare the rich functionality of the gc issue tracker to github and you'll find them incomparable. or, create a project and browse the "advanced" tab of your project and you'll probably find you have more control than it feels like, with little effort. regarding "can actually host content" - prolly a red herring because both let you host content. they just present a different ui for it.
  - mnutt 15y ago
    I think what he means is that you can actually design a site for your project and host it on Github. For example: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ Are there any non-google sites that do this on google code? As far as I can tell, all of them look like this: http://code.google.com/p/waf/ http://code.google.com/p/waf/ Which is fine, but I'd hardly say that a new user would find that less daunting than the Homebrew page. There's a lot going on, and it's trying to cater to both people who want to use waf and people who want to work on waf.
    - nolliesnom 15y ago
      yes, you can actually design a site for your project and host it on google code. directing your users to the gc-provided default is your choice. the contents of your repositories are hosted available at projectname.googlecode.com, and you can serve HTML just like you can code. example: http://json-template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/On-Design-Minimalism.html http://json-template.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/On-Design-... the urls are not as nice but github's aren't great either.
eliben 15y ago
Agreed, and yet implementing the features that make Github (& Bitbucket) what it is doesn't sound terribly difficult, and most importantly won't ruin the other "project-y" features of Google code. Personally my projects are still on Google code, but Github is becoming more and more tempting.

CrLf 15y ago

Why doesn't anyone ever think about the users? You know, the ones that just want to grab some binaries and do stuff? In the "old days", projects would have a webpage with some instructions, screenshots and downloadable binaries. The effort required to do this would pay off in terms of polish and would attract more users. Today, people find out about this supposedly nice piece of software, and proceed to find only a source file listing, no documentation (not even a half-decent README), no screenshots and, worst of all, the need to build from source. I'm a technical person with a fair amount of curiosity for these things, and I find myself frequently bummed out and give up when I see a link to github. Even when these "artifacts" exist, just the look of the site is enough to put regular users off. Sharing code is not only about dumping a source tree online. It's about polishing all that surrounds it and makes it a "product". Without users a source tree has no value. Frankly, the current situation is making the open-source community more and more closed in on itself. The first step for irrelevance.

luigi 15y ago
I've never seen this. Any concrete examples?
- CrLf 15y ago
  Any project on github. Put yourself in the shoes of a user that doesn't want to donwnload source. He lands on a github project page and just gives up. For a regular user (where "regular" depends on the type of software and the technical skill it requires), this is going way back to the days of source sharing on Usenet, way before the open-source term was mainstream (or even coined).
  - luigi 15y ago
    Why would someone go to GitHub if they don't want to download source code? Please, an example.
    - stock_toaster 15y ago
      I agree, and to go further, even _if_ a non-developer did on github (maybe higher in the search rankings), for many popular projects you can generally find the consumer facing url via the "homepage" link. Example: https://github.com/rack/rack https://github.com/rack/rack homepage url points to http://rack.rubyforge.org/ http://rack.rubyforge.org/ https://github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri https://github.com/tenderlove/nokogiri => http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew => http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ https://github.com/joyent/node https://github.com/joyent/node => http://nodejs.org/ http://nodejs.org/ etc, etc. It also seems fairly common to put the 'consumer' url near the top or bottom of the README.

pstadler 15y ago

I think the strength of GitHub is lying in it's focus on code. And that's the point of a code hosting website, isn't it? You visit a GitHub repository... what's the first thing you see? Instead of a blank page with some numbers and a project summary you're directly looking at the core of every project: its code. The presentation of the readme file is just one more thing which speaks for GitHub. Your project summary is integrated into the actual process of development because it's a part of it. Plus, you really get this feeling of activity while browsing projects and code on GitHub. Google Code and SourceForge seem so abandoned in comparison.