4 ms·

A pure Javascript implementation of git? 0. Why is this a good idea? Have all the desktops and laptops died, and are people forced to use Mozilla OS for devel

A pure Javascript implementation of git? 0. Why is this a good idea? Have all the desktops and laptops died, and are people forced to use Mozilla OS for development? I'd vastly prefer native applications on iPad, Windows RT, Android and other such platforms (if I suddenly went crazy and decided to do development on them). And a PNaCl application on Chromebook, if that's what you're specifically targeting. 1. Why won't it die like git.js did? [1] Why aren't you working on extending git.js? 2. Where can I see a technical roadmap? You're planning to deflate, applying deltas, huge packfiles with 4G objects in Javascript? What performance guarantees can you make? 3. Git is not a dumb book-keeper where you just checkout, make changes, and checkin. How are you going to replicate what makes git so awesome: `rebase -i`, `filter-branch`, `rerere`, pickaxe, and so many other features? [1]: https://github.com/danlucraft/git.js https://github.com/danlucraft/git.js

creationix 14y ago
I want this, I know many people who want this. That's good enough in my book to create it. If enough people believe in the idea enough to fund me, then it's a good idea. I know this is a hard project, that's why I haven't done it yet in my free time. I realize that this will require my full-time attention. But click through the links of my other projects in the kickstarter. I'm not new to hard problems and low-level coding in JavaScript. I don't have a detailed roadmap and I can't make performance guarantees because I don't know yet. But I do know that I'll do whatever is possible within the constraints of a web browser. Again, I'm not new to these constraints. I believe the web is finally mature enough to pull something like this off.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
rektide 14y ago
0. is a solved problem: this Kickstarter is for a library, not an application. There are already native libraries for git, so go ahead and go crazy and get busy developing, via libgit2, egit, ngit, objective-git, or any of the others. You come off as tyrannically dogmatic without having any real use case- you're poo poo'ing a web platform without any expressed reason for wanting a native stuff aside from it being native. -1. (And, humor, the native stuff exists.)
- artagnon 14y ago
  Don't mistake me for some old timer hammering away on his BSD box. I love the web, but I don't go around farting rainbows and claiming that Javascript is the be all and end all of all programming. There's a reason Git is written primarily in C; it does a lot of heavy-lifting, and we want something that performs.
  - rektide 14y ago
    Please no offense, but I don't give a rat what your background is- is that relevant? I'd consider if so! This feels like an interrogration-first line of questioning, and I'm trying to help us work out what's going on, and help us find relevant facts to begin to justify your line of inquiry. How many kids learning to program on the X or Y website do you expect will miss the 0.3ms extra it took for the site's offline capable web-ide to work? What harm, what badness is there to doing this on the web, and why would you call out a JS implementation up front as negative? That's really it- I still don't see you having any legitimate grievance besides whatever insane use case you have in mind for yourself and yourself alone needing 4GB crazy town git repos (you, linux, and chrome may indeed have problems). I just don't think that kind of extreme performance concern is where every single project ought start- some other well known programmers and I know it's better to not worry too greatly about performance until you have the problem in the first place. Focus on what can be done first, what good can be created, and then refine that good; don't nip good in the bud because down the road it won't do Y: that's premature man, and not constructive. Can we agree that JS projects like Three.js provide a lot of value, have allowed a lot of cool things to get built that people might not otherwise have made, that at least as importantly many of people might not have seen? Are they slower? Maybe, yeah, probably. My suggested reading here is Steve Wittens, writing about WebGL- there's a niche served, and allow that niche to enrich itself was more or less the take away for me, even though dieties and demigods like @id_aa_carmack might not have immediate use- http://acko.net/blog/on-webgl/ http://acko.net/blog/on-webgl/ Kinda felt like you ran in here and farted on our rainbows, to twist around your metaphor. The only concern you've stated is performance- let's pretend for a second that it's ok that you're calling it into question before we have any guestimates much less estimates for what performance is going to be- what's your estimate? For 98% of the projects on Git, do you think the performance of a JS git impl is going to be sufficiently fast as to not be problematic? Will it even be a noticeable factor, the speed, compared to cmd line git tools? If those users are happy and feel served, is that ok? Do you have concerns other than performance that I ought take into consideration when considering your expressed concern about this being a JavaScript library?

creationix 14y ago

I want this, I know many people who want this. That's good enough in my book to create it. If enough people believe in the idea enough to fund me, then it's a good idea. I know this is a hard project, that's why I haven't done it yet in my free time. I realize that this will require my full-time attention. But click through the links of my other projects in the kickstarter. I'm not new to hard problems and low-level coding in JavaScript. I don't have a detailed roadmap and I can't make performance guarantees because I don't know yet. But I do know that I'll do whatever is possible within the constraints of a web browser. Again, I'm not new to these constraints. I believe the web is finally mature enough to pull something like this off.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

rektide 14y ago

0. is a solved problem: this Kickstarter is for a library, not an application. There are already native libraries for git, so go ahead and go crazy and get busy developing, via libgit2, egit, ngit, objective-git, or any of the others. You come off as tyrannically dogmatic without having any real use case- you're poo poo'ing a web platform without any expressed reason for wanting a native stuff aside from it being native. -1. (And, humor, the native stuff exists.)

artagnon 14y ago
Don't mistake me for some old timer hammering away on his BSD box. I love the web, but I don't go around farting rainbows and claiming that Javascript is the be all and end all of all programming. There's a reason Git is written primarily in C; it does a lot of heavy-lifting, and we want something that performs.
- rektide 14y ago
  Please no offense, but I don't give a rat what your background is- is that relevant? I'd consider if so! This feels like an interrogration-first line of questioning, and I'm trying to help us work out what's going on, and help us find relevant facts to begin to justify your line of inquiry. How many kids learning to program on the X or Y website do you expect will miss the 0.3ms extra it took for the site's offline capable web-ide to work? What harm, what badness is there to doing this on the web, and why would you call out a JS implementation up front as negative? That's really it- I still don't see you having any legitimate grievance besides whatever insane use case you have in mind for yourself and yourself alone needing 4GB crazy town git repos (you, linux, and chrome may indeed have problems). I just don't think that kind of extreme performance concern is where every single project ought start- some other well known programmers and I know it's better to not worry too greatly about performance until you have the problem in the first place. Focus on what can be done first, what good can be created, and then refine that good; don't nip good in the bud because down the road it won't do Y: that's premature man, and not constructive. Can we agree that JS projects like Three.js provide a lot of value, have allowed a lot of cool things to get built that people might not otherwise have made, that at least as importantly many of people might not have seen? Are they slower? Maybe, yeah, probably. My suggested reading here is Steve Wittens, writing about WebGL- there's a niche served, and allow that niche to enrich itself was more or less the take away for me, even though dieties and demigods like @id_aa_carmack might not have immediate use- http://acko.net/blog/on-webgl/ http://acko.net/blog/on-webgl/ Kinda felt like you ran in here and farted on our rainbows, to twist around your metaphor. The only concern you've stated is performance- let's pretend for a second that it's ok that you're calling it into question before we have any guestimates much less estimates for what performance is going to be- what's your estimate? For 98% of the projects on Git, do you think the performance of a JS git impl is going to be sufficiently fast as to not be problematic? Will it even be a noticeable factor, the speed, compared to cmd line git tools? If those users are happy and feel served, is that ok? Do you have concerns other than performance that I ought take into consideration when considering your expressed concern about this being a JavaScript library?