15 ms·

If your car followed the unix philosophy you’d have to bring your own radio and AC.

prepend 3y ago
Right. It’s a careful balance of what to include and what not to include. I don’t know the exact dividing line for “do one thing” but I think that modularity and composability is important. I like having an AC in my car. But I don’t want AC to be a dependency for my car. I like chaining tools together, but work to minimize the required dependency among tools. I think in principle, it’s good if you can install components separately. So for me git only doing version control is good. If they added a chat feature, I would not want that. If they had a chat module that I could optionally install, maybe.
- Skinney 3y ago
  Fossil doesn’t have a dependency on chat, forum, wiki or issues. They’re included, part of the same product. But if you don’t want it, then you don’t have to use it. Just like you don’t have to turn on the radio or AC in your car. Just like all the email related stuff in Git. And, just because they’re included doesn’t mean they detract the value of the other stuff that is there. A car without an AC isn’t better to drive than a car with an AC. And, just like a car comes with a radio and AC because you likely want those conviniences, fossil comes with issue tracking and wiki because you’re likely to want that for your project. Don’t have to use it, but it’s there if you do.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > And, just because they’re included doesn’t mean they detract the value of the other stuff that is there. I think this is a philosophical preference. I think they do detract because they make the system more complex. And fossil developers work on that instead of the think I want. So there’s a cost there. Having an AC and radio in a car increases its price. Not by much but by something. If designers didn’t work in the AC, there would be something else they put in. Or the car would be simpler. I definitely want an AC in every car I buy. Maybe a radio. So I don’t mind they they’re bundled. I’m sure the people who want wikis and chat in every repo like it too. Good for them, use it. I wish them the best. I don’t like it and think it detracts from their product. I consider them more like project management or collab software with a custom vcm built in. And so I’d rather prefer some collab stack that uses the best vcm stack I think is out there, git. So they’re on a tough spot because they’d be better off just selling all their GitHub-competitor features without trying to convince people to switch off of git. Just like a car coffee maker company would be better off just making coffee makers they fit into popular cars rather than trying to make a literal car.
    - sgbeal 3y ago
      > And fossil developers work on that instead of the think I want. While also inviting you to join the development team and scratch your own personal itches. The overwhelming majority of fossil features were implemented by someone scratching a personal itch, not someone scratching random internet-goers' itches.
- sgbeal 3y ago
  > Right. It’s a careful balance of what to include and what not to include. (A long-time fossil dev here...) The single most important criteria for new features in fossil is, quite simply, "is it useful to fossil's own developers?" Countless times, Richard (the project lead) has found a personal SCM itch in the sqlite project and, a few hours later, committed a feature to fossil to handle that. Fossil is, and always has been, first and foremost, a tool to manage the sqlite project's source code, and sqlite's development is still a primary driver for new features in fossil. None of the features are sqlite-project-specific, but many of the derive from the needs of that project.
kmstout 3y ago
But then I could plan $CURLOC "alice's restaurant" \ | dress-with pit-stops -every $(( RANGE - 100 )) \ | drive and then crank up the death polka.
cesarb 3y ago
> If your car followed the unix philosophy you’d have to bring your own radio I've seen plenty of cars in which you have to bring your own radio. AFAIK, there's even a standard connector in the back of the hole where the radio fits (and the size and shape of the hole seems to always be the same, so it's probably standardized too). I've even seen things like DVD players which fit into that same hole (using an articulated screen which retracts into the device's body).

Right. It’s a careful balance of what to include and what not to include. I don’t know the exact dividing line for “do one thing” but I think that modularity and composability is important. I like having an AC in my car. But I don’t want AC to be a dependency for my car. I like chaining tools together, but work to minimize the required dependency among tools. I think in principle, it’s good if you can install components separately. So for me git only doing version control is good. If they added a chat feature, I would not want that. If they had a chat module that I could optionally install, maybe.

Skinney 3y ago
Fossil doesn’t have a dependency on chat, forum, wiki or issues. They’re included, part of the same product. But if you don’t want it, then you don’t have to use it. Just like you don’t have to turn on the radio or AC in your car. Just like all the email related stuff in Git. And, just because they’re included doesn’t mean they detract the value of the other stuff that is there. A car without an AC isn’t better to drive than a car with an AC. And, just like a car comes with a radio and AC because you likely want those conviniences, fossil comes with issue tracking and wiki because you’re likely to want that for your project. Don’t have to use it, but it’s there if you do.
- prepend 3y ago
  > And, just because they’re included doesn’t mean they detract the value of the other stuff that is there. I think this is a philosophical preference. I think they do detract because they make the system more complex. And fossil developers work on that instead of the think I want. So there’s a cost there. Having an AC and radio in a car increases its price. Not by much but by something. If designers didn’t work in the AC, there would be something else they put in. Or the car would be simpler. I definitely want an AC in every car I buy. Maybe a radio. So I don’t mind they they’re bundled. I’m sure the people who want wikis and chat in every repo like it too. Good for them, use it. I wish them the best. I don’t like it and think it detracts from their product. I consider them more like project management or collab software with a custom vcm built in. And so I’d rather prefer some collab stack that uses the best vcm stack I think is out there, git. So they’re on a tough spot because they’d be better off just selling all their GitHub-competitor features without trying to convince people to switch off of git. Just like a car coffee maker company would be better off just making coffee makers they fit into popular cars rather than trying to make a literal car.
  - sgbeal 3y ago
    > And fossil developers work on that instead of the think I want. While also inviting you to join the development team and scratch your own personal itches. The overwhelming majority of fossil features were implemented by someone scratching a personal itch, not someone scratching random internet-goers' itches.
sgbeal 3y ago
> Right. It’s a careful balance of what to include and what not to include. (A long-time fossil dev here...) The single most important criteria for new features in fossil is, quite simply, "is it useful to fossil's own developers?" Countless times, Richard (the project lead) has found a personal SCM itch in the sqlite project and, a few hours later, committed a feature to fossil to handle that. Fossil is, and always has been, first and foremost, a tool to manage the sqlite project's source code, and sqlite's development is still a primary driver for new features in fossil. None of the features are sqlite-project-specific, but many of the derive from the needs of that project.

kmstout 3y ago

But then I could plan $CURLOC "alice's restaurant" \ | dress-with pit-stops -every $(( RANGE - 100 )) \ | drive and then crank up the death polka.

cesarb 3y ago

> If your car followed the unix philosophy you’d have to bring your own radio I've seen plenty of cars in which you have to bring your own radio. AFAIK, there's even a standard connector in the back of the hole where the radio fits (and the size and shape of the hole seems to always be the same, so it's probably standardized too). I've even seen things like DVD players which fit into that same hole (using an articulated screen which retracts into the device's body).