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I'm sure some people will find a way to complain about this, but this is a welcome removal. I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used

I'm sure some people will find a way to complain about this, but this is a welcome removal. I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used in a Github repository in a very long time, especially considering you can generate a ZIP file of any repository by doing this to the end of the repository URL: /archive/master.zip the downloads functionality has always felt redundant anyway. If you need a compiled binary, you should be getting it from the official website or Bittorrent not expecting it to be up on Github already compiled considering Github is all about collaboration and source control not a file hosting service. Two changes in one day, Github are nailing it.

jakebasile 14y ago
What if the project needs to be compiled?
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  Then I would imagine the official site would have a downloadable binary already compiled. Github isn't really a place for getting compiled binaries, it's for collaboration and source control. I've never gone to a repository with the intent of being able to download compiled anything, chances are if you're apt enough getting to the repository you'd already know to expect this. The author or vendor should be supplying a compiled binary for download in my opinion somewhere else like their website or even via Bittorrent.
  - jakebasile 14y ago
    But Github has been moving more and more to be the site for a project, that's what Github Pages is explicitly for. It was nice to have everything under one place, with one account system. Not unrecoverable, but to me this was a regrettable decision for them to make.
  - daleharvey 14y ago
    For a lot of projects the gh-pages 'is' the official website. Smaller projects have never (until now) needed another location to host a full project, you may disagree that github aims to be a place to host open source projects but gh-pages, a hosted wiki and issue tracker suggests otherwise.
    - sopooneo 14y ago
      I don't know about this stuff, so ask in earnest: couldn't such smaller projects upload their compiled installers to some free app hosting service, and link to that from their github site pages?
      - daleharvey 14y ago
        They can, but it means dealing with another service which is inconvenient, especially for OSS projects
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - voltagex_ 14y ago
    And who's going to pay for my bandwidth?
    - DigitalSea 14y ago
      Maybe the change is to combat those who have been leeching off of Github for free bandwidth. If you're serious about your project and you're consuming enough bandwidth to worry about a big S3 bill, you're probably big enough to be able to afford to pay for bandwidth. S3 is cheap and dead easy to use.
      - jakebasile 14y ago
        How is using a service that Github provided "leeching"? Is hosting an open source project there also leeching?
imrehg 14y ago
Not everything is distributed as source. Eg. Android app - source in git repo, apk in download, what's wrong with that?
- daleharvey 14y ago
  Or every JavaScript library that has a .min build
snogglethorpe 14y ago
> this is a welcome removal No, it's not "welcome", because separate "downloads" are (1) no burden on people who don't use them, and (2) actually a useful feature. In many cases, a tarball of the repo contents isn't the same thing as a distribution tarball, because the latter often contains various generated files that may be more annoying for the user to generate than is justified for somebody just interested in compiling and installing the software. Making a distribution tarball typically involves generating those things and packaging them together with the sources. Some repos contains generated files as well to work around the issue, but this is ugly and causes its own problems. > Github are nailing it Er, removing useful features may be good from a business point of view (github may feel the support burden, etc, isn't justified by the usefulness), but I don't think it deserves to be called "nailing it" (unless "it" is the user, of course... :] )....
- lelandbatey 14y ago
  I feel like GitHub should not be the place where you host your distribution tarball. As was mentioned, GitHub is about source code and collaboration and the distribution of that source code. It's just not inside the scope of what GitHub does, and in that sense I think this is an improvement because it makes for a more focused product.
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago
    Maybe github doesn't want that, but it's very common practice for small/simple projects to have only a github presence, and no dedicated website of their own at all. It's simple, easy, and keeps everything in one place. Again, this change may very well be in github's interests, but it's also going to make life more annoying for many gibhut users.
    - chii 14y ago
      why can't those projects simply host the downloads in the actual repository? its just a binary file, and the link to the raw file can be generated quite easily. For example: https://github.com/joelgwebber/xna-platformer/raw/master/platformer/Microsoft%20Permissive%20License.rtf https://github.com/joelgwebber/xna-platformer/raw/master/pla...
detst 14y ago
you should Why do people feel the need to tell others what they should or shouldn't be doing when there clearly isn't a right or wrong way? Some people found it useful, GitHub decided to discontinue the feature but your opinion on what others should be doing isn't relevant. It's certainly closer to their core feature set than web site hosting and I don't anticipate that going away anytime soon. you should be getting it from the official website Oh, so from our GitHub hosted sites?
buttscicles 14y ago
>If you need a compiled binary, you should be getting it from the official website Many projects use Github pages as the official website, Twitter Bootstrap for example. What should they be expected to do? Distribute via BitTorrent and hope everybody that wants to use the project has a torrent client installed (and are able to even use bittorrent at their place of work/school)? It's just not as convenient for maintainers or users, who just want to grab an archive and get on with it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ceol 14y ago
  Bootstrap can be distributed as source. Just download at the last stable tag.
  - ytpete 14y ago
    But that isn't true of many other legit open source projects. As others have pointed out: mobile apps, browser extensions, native apps / libraries, etc. are much more readily accessible when distributed as binaries than as source. Most open-source projects don't want to require everyone to learn how to build from source before they're allowed to use the project, and I think that's a good thing.
  - ytpete 14y ago
    One other note: last I checked, the auto-generated ZIP/TAR downloads (for tags or master) were completely broken for any repo that uses submodules.
clobber 14y ago
> I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used in a Github repository in a very long time Good thing you speak for every repo
gurkendoktor 14y ago
> I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used in a Github repository in a very long time Because, from painful experience, programmatically uploading files has been broken often enough. > considering Github is all about collaboration and source control not a file hosting service Except that github is offering websites which are great to present small projects - should it cut off these too? (I now believe: yes)
X-Istence 14y ago
GitX, one of the many Git gui frontends for Mac OS X is distributed using the Download mechanism. It allows me, the user to easily download a pre-compiled binary instead of having to download and then build it.

jakebasile 14y ago

What if the project needs to be compiled?

DigitalSea 14y ago
Then I would imagine the official site would have a downloadable binary already compiled. Github isn't really a place for getting compiled binaries, it's for collaboration and source control. I've never gone to a repository with the intent of being able to download compiled anything, chances are if you're apt enough getting to the repository you'd already know to expect this. The author or vendor should be supplying a compiled binary for download in my opinion somewhere else like their website or even via Bittorrent.
- jakebasile 14y ago
  But Github has been moving more and more to be the site for a project, that's what Github Pages is explicitly for. It was nice to have everything under one place, with one account system. Not unrecoverable, but to me this was a regrettable decision for them to make.
- daleharvey 14y ago
  For a lot of projects the gh-pages 'is' the official website. Smaller projects have never (until now) needed another location to host a full project, you may disagree that github aims to be a place to host open source projects but gh-pages, a hosted wiki and issue tracker suggests otherwise.
  - sopooneo 14y ago
    I don't know about this stuff, so ask in earnest: couldn't such smaller projects upload their compiled installers to some free app hosting service, and link to that from their github site pages?
    - daleharvey 14y ago
      They can, but it means dealing with another service which is inconvenient, especially for OSS projects
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- voltagex_ 14y ago
  And who's going to pay for my bandwidth?
  - DigitalSea 14y ago
    Maybe the change is to combat those who have been leeching off of Github for free bandwidth. If you're serious about your project and you're consuming enough bandwidth to worry about a big S3 bill, you're probably big enough to be able to afford to pay for bandwidth. S3 is cheap and dead easy to use.
    - jakebasile 14y ago
      How is using a service that Github provided "leeching"? Is hosting an open source project there also leeching?

imrehg 14y ago

Not everything is distributed as source. Eg. Android app - source in git repo, apk in download, what's wrong with that?

daleharvey 14y ago
Or every JavaScript library that has a .min build

snogglethorpe 14y ago

> this is a welcome removal No, it's not "welcome", because separate "downloads" are (1) no burden on people who don't use them, and (2) actually a useful feature. In many cases, a tarball of the repo contents isn't the same thing as a distribution tarball, because the latter often contains various generated files that may be more annoying for the user to generate than is justified for somebody just interested in compiling and installing the software. Making a distribution tarball typically involves generating those things and packaging them together with the sources. Some repos contains generated files as well to work around the issue, but this is ugly and causes its own problems. > Github are nailing it Er, removing useful features may be good from a business point of view (github may feel the support burden, etc, isn't justified by the usefulness), but I don't think it deserves to be called "nailing it" (unless "it" is the user, of course... :] )....

lelandbatey 14y ago
I feel like GitHub should not be the place where you host your distribution tarball. As was mentioned, GitHub is about source code and collaboration and the distribution of that source code. It's just not inside the scope of what GitHub does, and in that sense I think this is an improvement because it makes for a more focused product.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  Maybe github doesn't want that, but it's very common practice for small/simple projects to have only a github presence, and no dedicated website of their own at all. It's simple, easy, and keeps everything in one place. Again, this change may very well be in github's interests, but it's also going to make life more annoying for many gibhut users.
  - chii 14y ago
    why can't those projects simply host the downloads in the actual repository? its just a binary file, and the link to the raw file can be generated quite easily. For example: https://github.com/joelgwebber/xna-platformer/raw/master/platformer/Microsoft%20Permissive%20License.rtf https://github.com/joelgwebber/xna-platformer/raw/master/pla...

detst 14y ago

you should Why do people feel the need to tell others what they should or shouldn't be doing when there clearly isn't a right or wrong way? Some people found it useful, GitHub decided to discontinue the feature but your opinion on what others should be doing isn't relevant. It's certainly closer to their core feature set than web site hosting and I don't anticipate that going away anytime soon. you should be getting it from the official website Oh, so from our GitHub hosted sites?

buttscicles 14y ago

>If you need a compiled binary, you should be getting it from the official website Many projects use Github pages as the official website, Twitter Bootstrap for example. What should they be expected to do? Distribute via BitTorrent and hope everybody that wants to use the project has a torrent client installed (and are able to even use bittorrent at their place of work/school)? It's just not as convenient for maintainers or users, who just want to grab an archive and get on with it.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ceol 14y ago
Bootstrap can be distributed as source. Just download at the last stable tag.
- ytpete 14y ago
  But that isn't true of many other legit open source projects. As others have pointed out: mobile apps, browser extensions, native apps / libraries, etc. are much more readily accessible when distributed as binaries than as source. Most open-source projects don't want to require everyone to learn how to build from source before they're allowed to use the project, and I think that's a good thing.
- ytpete 14y ago
  One other note: last I checked, the auto-generated ZIP/TAR downloads (for tags or master) were completely broken for any repo that uses submodules.

clobber 14y ago

> I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used in a Github repository in a very long time Good thing you speak for every repo

gurkendoktor 14y ago

> I can't really think of any instance where I've seen downloads used in a Github repository in a very long time Because, from painful experience, programmatically uploading files has been broken often enough. > considering Github is all about collaboration and source control not a file hosting service Except that github is offering websites which are great to present small projects - should it cut off these too? (I now believe: yes)

X-Istence 14y ago

GitX, one of the many Git gui frontends for Mac OS X is distributed using the Download mechanism. It allows me, the user to easily download a pre-compiled binary instead of having to download and then build it.