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So there is a bug in the Twitter video download. When Twitter went to 280 chars it started showing up. 280 chars is too long for a file name (on Windows at leas

So there is a bug in the Twitter video download. When Twitter went to 280 chars it started showing up. 280 chars is too long for a file name (on Windows at least.) I sent YouTube-dl a pull request with a fix but not only did they not accept it, they brushed me off in a way that gave me the impression they didn't want fixes from the outside. I'm fairly old and this was my first attempt at contributing to open source. Is this the way it goes typically? I imagine they get a lot of people with b.s. pull requests so they get jaded. It's understandable I suppose. The bug still exists in yt-dlp. I run a local copy with my fix for those times when I need it.

frafra 5y ago
I am sorry to hear that; you have been unlucky indeed, as it is not like that usually. I would suggest you to submit the same patch to yt-dlp. My only PR for youtube-dl has been waiting for ~2.5 year (#21837), so I proposed the same patch to yt-dlp, which has been quickly merged after a brief review (#1920). I found yt-dlp developers friendlier indeed, and I get notified if there is an issue or a PR that I could be interested in reviewing or contributing to. Sometimes developers are volunteers, have too much to do, and they can get frustrated. Having good procedures is critical, like testing/CI, pre-commit with blake8 and such instead of asking to read a very long list of rules, using GitHub merge queue, involve previous contributors automatically, share the burden with others as much as possible, etc.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Yes, I imagine it depends on the project. I read both good stories and bad about it. I haven't let it discourage me. I'll consider resubmitting to yt-dlp. Thanks!
CannisterFlux 5y ago
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 There's this pull request that works on fixing the problem (not merged yet), I don't know if it is yours under a different alias, but you can see the work and edge cases involved for something that a priori seems simple ("just truncate the name!" haha). Also the dude making the PR looks like an external contributor. It seems like normal polite open source interaction there to me, despite what could be perceived as a negative initial reaction. What might come across as dry or brushing off could be genuine concern at unforeseen consequences.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Not mine. It gets kind of interesting when there are a lot of emojis in the tweet because they get expanded, as in the emoji becomes the descriptive name for it, like American flag hand clap hand clap heart laughing out loud. This causes it to become too long.
- numpad0 5y ago
  I don’t get it. Just truncate the name haha. What I don’t understand is affected versions of youtube-dl/yt-dlp aborts download when the resultant filename just happens to be too long, and there’s no quick and easy way to temporarily work it. Ephemeral URLs could become stale before that is done.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Well, it's actually not that hard to quickfix it at the CLI: youtube-dl -o "%(title).200s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
__s 5y ago
Contributing to open source is often a mixed bag. Some projects are receptive, some aren't. & arguably this is fine: maintainers offer the source so that you can scratch your itch without needing their approval Personally I consider it a plus if my PR gets any feedback. They owe me nothing Sounds like your PR would've been a nice merge tho, thanks for playing
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I like it when the maintainers are up front about it, like we're open sourcing this but not looking for contributions.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    Your PR deserved a better answer. They are free to reject, but courtesy isn't an option.
    - mwattsun 5y ago
      Thanks. I thought so too. I've worked with all kinds in my career so I've learned to adjust for it.
themodelplumber 5y ago
Weird that they wouldn't jump on that. Sorry to hear about it. Sometimes authors end up over-identifying with their software or processes, so to speak. Or regular bug reports hit harder for them on a given day. I've never had that kind of thing happen myself, but years ago I participated in a FOSS project that was similar with feature patches. It was amazing to see the patches that came in, that didn't meet the maintainer standard, that would have been awesome (graphics software). The only people who got patches submitted were the ones who hung around, stayed active in the community, and maintained a long narrative about the changes the maintainer wanted to see. It was a really high bar. But that's just one example...I had really good results lately with projects like Nim generously taking up and diving into bug reports from complete noobs like me.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I have sympathy for open source authors who are often under paid and unappreciated, as has been in the news recently. Then you have big blowups like Log4j and actix-web. For the life of me, I don't understand how someone could dump on a programmer when they are getting the software for free. The whole idea is that if you don't like something, fix it yourself.
PaulKeeble 5y ago
I would say about 75% of projects are like that, they don't want or take external contributions or if they do the rules are often so opaque to doing so properly they often aren't worth the effort. The rest have been a mixed bag of unpleasant but ultimately taking the bug fix to one project where I and the creator had a blast of a time for 6 months after he just gave me commit rights after my second patch and left me to it once I said what I was building towards. I think the good ones that make this easy and fun are pretty rare, I definitely check the pull requests and bugs for any project before I consider contributing nowadays.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  Especially projects that are run by corporations. They often demand you sign a CLA, which means getting a lawyer involved to understand what you're giving up (for each project you want to help!) Open source has become so hostile, I don't even bother any more.
OJFord 5y ago
Seems to be https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/24604 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/24604? The complaint is that it's come up repeatedly ('Not again. Use search') - agree it's a bit of a brush off, and it's not helpful for anybody (perhaps most of all the maintainers themselves!) that it doesn't link any of the others, or the one that was merged, or the first one with a better explanation for rejection, or whatever. Something I would say though (that as above doesn't seem to be the issue, but who knows maybe it contributed) is that you could put a bit more time into the PR description & title. There's little human-readable (without following a link) information in the title. Your checked boxes are all broken (`[x ]` & `[ x]`) despite the instructions on how to do it (`[x]`) that you've left in (that also indicates a bad template in fairness, should be a comment (`<!--`) so only you see it, while editing). It's hard to read, separating your own description from the templated instructions. You also didn't follow up on it in a way that seems like you're bothered, nor at all for several months. When you open a PR like this you're being helpful and fixing something yes, but you're also asking someone to maintain it for you going forward, and really you just proved that you wouldn't have anything further to do with it. Maybe if you'd followed up when it was closed asking for a link to where it had been addressed previously so that you could help test it ('since it is still not working for me with the latest released version or master @ deadb33f') it would have gone differently, perhaps the maintainer simply misunderstood what you were fixing, and would've reopened it.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Great! Thanks for the feedback. I had something that I thought I could throw over the fence and then get on with my life because I had a solution for myself, but now that you mention it, that's not a good way to approach it. Instead I deleted it and forgot about it until today. The thing that threw me off was the "Not again. Use search before you implement anything" comment. Ok, so if it's a recurring issue why isn't it fixed? It's not a big fix.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Throwing things over the fence as a drive by is rarely useful. Maintainers are busy people, so dropping off a clue that would take Sherlock Holmes time to solve isn't helpful. Imagine you're the maintainer being asked to look into something. Would you rather have all of the information provided in as much detail as possible so that you could dive right in and fix it, or do a deep dive into something that may or may not even be a problem but something from a grumpy person on the internet?
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
The vast majority of OSS maintainers I've interacted with have been extremely helpful and grateful, even though I'm a pretty mediocre developer and my code never works without making major changes to it. This is an exception. Probably he is simply burned out.
akeck 5y ago
I use the "--trim-filenames" flag to deal with this issue.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Ah. Then perhaps the problem is that the program dumps out in failure mode instead of printing this helpful message.
asddubs 5y ago
depends entirely on the project. Some maintainers are a bit curmudgeonly, others are very welcoming to contributions. If it's on github I tend to check the closed pull requests sections before deciding to contribute these days, gives a good indicator of whether contributions are regularly merged. Plus you can read a few closed/merged ones to avoid common pitfalls
naikrovek 5y ago
that's not a problem in Windows anymore; the limit, once you opt in, is 32768-ish (I forget exactly how many) characters.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  I had already fixed problem for myself without editing the registry, but here's how use regedit to open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem Set LongPathsEnabled to true https://www.howtogeek.com/266621/how-to-make-windows-10-accept-file-paths-over-260-characters/ https://www.howtogeek.com/266621/how-to-make-windows-10-acce...

frafra 5y ago

I am sorry to hear that; you have been unlucky indeed, as it is not like that usually. I would suggest you to submit the same patch to yt-dlp. My only PR for youtube-dl has been waiting for ~2.5 year (#21837), so I proposed the same patch to yt-dlp, which has been quickly merged after a brief review (#1920). I found yt-dlp developers friendlier indeed, and I get notified if there is an issue or a PR that I could be interested in reviewing or contributing to. Sometimes developers are volunteers, have too much to do, and they can get frustrated. Having good procedures is critical, like testing/CI, pre-commit with blake8 and such instead of asking to read a very long list of rules, using GitHub merge queue, involve previous contributors automatically, share the burden with others as much as possible, etc.

mwattsun 5y ago
Yes, I imagine it depends on the project. I read both good stories and bad about it. I haven't let it discourage me. I'll consider resubmitting to yt-dlp. Thanks!

CannisterFlux 5y ago

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 There's this pull request that works on fixing the problem (not merged yet), I don't know if it is yours under a different alias, but you can see the work and edge cases involved for something that a priori seems simple ("just truncate the name!" haha). Also the dude making the PR looks like an external contributor. It seems like normal polite open source interaction there to me, despite what could be perceived as a negative initial reaction. What might come across as dry or brushing off could be genuine concern at unforeseen consequences.

mwattsun 5y ago
Not mine. It gets kind of interesting when there are a lot of emojis in the tweet because they get expanded, as in the emoji becomes the descriptive name for it, like American flag hand clap hand clap heart laughing out loud. This causes it to become too long.
numpad0 5y ago
I don’t get it. Just truncate the name haha. What I don’t understand is affected versions of youtube-dl/yt-dlp aborts download when the resultant filename just happens to be too long, and there’s no quick and easy way to temporarily work it. Ephemeral URLs could become stale before that is done.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  Well, it's actually not that hard to quickfix it at the CLI: youtube-dl -o "%(title).200s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"

__s 5y ago

Contributing to open source is often a mixed bag. Some projects are receptive, some aren't. & arguably this is fine: maintainers offer the source so that you can scratch your itch without needing their approval Personally I consider it a plus if my PR gets any feedback. They owe me nothing Sounds like your PR would've been a nice merge tho, thanks for playing

mwattsun 5y ago
I like it when the maintainers are up front about it, like we're open sourcing this but not looking for contributions.
- rat9988 5y ago
  Your PR deserved a better answer. They are free to reject, but courtesy isn't an option.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    Thanks. I thought so too. I've worked with all kinds in my career so I've learned to adjust for it.

themodelplumber 5y ago

Weird that they wouldn't jump on that. Sorry to hear about it. Sometimes authors end up over-identifying with their software or processes, so to speak. Or regular bug reports hit harder for them on a given day. I've never had that kind of thing happen myself, but years ago I participated in a FOSS project that was similar with feature patches. It was amazing to see the patches that came in, that didn't meet the maintainer standard, that would have been awesome (graphics software). The only people who got patches submitted were the ones who hung around, stayed active in the community, and maintained a long narrative about the changes the maintainer wanted to see. It was a really high bar. But that's just one example...I had really good results lately with projects like Nim generously taking up and diving into bug reports from complete noobs like me.

mwattsun 5y ago
I have sympathy for open source authors who are often under paid and unappreciated, as has been in the news recently. Then you have big blowups like Log4j and actix-web. For the life of me, I don't understand how someone could dump on a programmer when they are getting the software for free. The whole idea is that if you don't like something, fix it yourself.

PaulKeeble 5y ago

I would say about 75% of projects are like that, they don't want or take external contributions or if they do the rules are often so opaque to doing so properly they often aren't worth the effort. The rest have been a mixed bag of unpleasant but ultimately taking the bug fix to one project where I and the creator had a blast of a time for 6 months after he just gave me commit rights after my second patch and left me to it once I said what I was building towards. I think the good ones that make this easy and fun are pretty rare, I definitely check the pull requests and bugs for any project before I consider contributing nowadays.

notreallyserio 5y ago
Especially projects that are run by corporations. They often demand you sign a CLA, which means getting a lawyer involved to understand what you're giving up (for each project you want to help!) Open source has become so hostile, I don't even bother any more.

OJFord 5y ago

Seems to be https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/24604 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/24604? The complaint is that it's come up repeatedly ('Not again. Use search') - agree it's a bit of a brush off, and it's not helpful for anybody (perhaps most of all the maintainers themselves!) that it doesn't link any of the others, or the one that was merged, or the first one with a better explanation for rejection, or whatever. Something I would say though (that as above doesn't seem to be the issue, but who knows maybe it contributed) is that you could put a bit more time into the PR description & title. There's little human-readable (without following a link) information in the title. Your checked boxes are all broken (`[x ]` & `[ x]`) despite the instructions on how to do it (`[x]`) that you've left in (that also indicates a bad template in fairness, should be a comment (`<!--`) so only you see it, while editing). It's hard to read, separating your own description from the templated instructions. You also didn't follow up on it in a way that seems like you're bothered, nor at all for several months. When you open a PR like this you're being helpful and fixing something yes, but you're also asking someone to maintain it for you going forward, and really you just proved that you wouldn't have anything further to do with it. Maybe if you'd followed up when it was closed asking for a link to where it had been addressed previously so that you could help test it ('since it is still not working for me with the latest released version or master @ deadb33f') it would have gone differently, perhaps the maintainer simply misunderstood what you were fixing, and would've reopened it.

mwattsun 5y ago
Great! Thanks for the feedback. I had something that I thought I could throw over the fence and then get on with my life because I had a solution for myself, but now that you mention it, that's not a good way to approach it. Instead I deleted it and forgot about it until today. The thing that threw me off was the "Not again. Use search before you implement anything" comment. Ok, so if it's a recurring issue why isn't it fixed? It's not a big fix.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Throwing things over the fence as a drive by is rarely useful. Maintainers are busy people, so dropping off a clue that would take Sherlock Holmes time to solve isn't helpful. Imagine you're the maintainer being asked to look into something. Would you rather have all of the information provided in as much detail as possible so that you could dive right in and fix it, or do a deep dive into something that may or may not even be a problem but something from a grumpy person on the internet?

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago

The vast majority of OSS maintainers I've interacted with have been extremely helpful and grateful, even though I'm a pretty mediocre developer and my code never works without making major changes to it. This is an exception. Probably he is simply burned out.

akeck 5y ago

I use the "--trim-filenames" flag to deal with this issue.

mwattsun 5y ago
Ah. Then perhaps the problem is that the program dumps out in failure mode instead of printing this helpful message.

asddubs 5y ago

depends entirely on the project. Some maintainers are a bit curmudgeonly, others are very welcoming to contributions. If it's on github I tend to check the closed pull requests sections before deciding to contribute these days, gives a good indicator of whether contributions are regularly merged. Plus you can read a few closed/merged ones to avoid common pitfalls

naikrovek 5y ago

that's not a problem in Windows anymore; the limit, once you opt in, is 32768-ish (I forget exactly how many) characters.

mwattsun 5y ago
I had already fixed problem for myself without editing the registry, but here's how use regedit to open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem Set LongPathsEnabled to true https://www.howtogeek.com/266621/how-to-make-windows-10-accept-file-paths-over-260-characters/ https://www.howtogeek.com/266621/how-to-make-windows-10-acce...