5 ms·

Right in the middle of a major push to production. Awesome.

by joshdotsmith 12y ago

akerl_ 12y ago
It's too bad git requires a central server.
- AYBABTME 12y ago
  How is this a useful comment? Everybody knows that Git is distributed. Everytime Github's down, somebody feels the urge to remind everybody else about that. Github's not only Git. Lots of services integrate with Github. Stuff like continuous integration, continuous deployment. If your system is built on those things, Github being down will prevent you from deploying. What's the alternative, replicate everything in-house/self hosted? Should startup stop using third party service providers?
  - akerl_ 12y ago
    If your workflow involves services that integrate with GitHub, you should have a plan for when GitHub is not available. You've got your source code elsewhere, you should have docs and procedures for running the tests in your own dev environments and for utilizing whatever staging/deploy process you prefer without GitHub as an intermediary. I continue to post comments like that because while I love GitHub, watching the community put all their eggs in GitHub's basket, especially when GitHub lives on top of a tool designed to avoid SPoFs, is concerning.
    - hamburglar 12y ago
      100%. GitHub is amazing. GitHub is a wonderful tool. GitHub is also just a service cooked up by a handful of jokers who got enough funding to make it happen, and they do a reasonable job of keeping it running most of the time. I wish them all the best, and yet making my own company's infrastructure reliant on it is not something I'm comfortable with. Sometimes they're going to blow it, and that's ok. If them blowing it means my business is affected, I'm the dummy.
      - skrebbel 12y ago
        > jokers who got enough funding to make it happen While I agree with the general gist of your comment, GitHub was entirely self-funded up until about a year ago or so. they didn't "get" funding, they made real money and reinvested it and grew.
        hamburglar 12y ago
        Fine, bootstrapping jokers are my favorite kind of jokers. No offense intended. My point is it's just a small company with no SLA, express or implied. It could have been anybody with the same great idea, and just because they had a great idea doesn't make them automatically reliable enough to pin your infrastructure on.
    - brokenparser 12y ago
      > especially when GitHub lives on top of a tool designed to avoid SPoFs You're saying it as if it were a bad thing.
      - akerl_ 12y ago
        No? The fact that GitHub is based on a distributed tool is a large part of what makes it so awesome. I can take advantage of the sweet social/collaborative elements of GitHub without locking myself to a central server. If the lower-level they used weren't so open/distributed, I doubt GitHub would have taken off like it has.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    What's the alternative, replicate everything in-house/self hosted? Erm... Yes? You write that as if hosting your own repository is somehow a foolish or implausible thing to do. Should startup stop using third party service providers? Stop? Maybe, maybe not, it obviously depends on the circumstances. Stop relying on them without a back-up plan? Absolutely. If you can't run your essential systems without GitHub, or any other third party system that isn't under your direct control, then you need better contingency planning.
jsmthrowaway 12y ago
Do you and I have a different definition of "production?" GitHub going down impacts your deploys?
- Aqueous 12y ago
  If you're using a cloud running test service like Travis CI pushing to GitHub can trigger your whole deployment process starting with running the unit and integration tests.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    Now you deploying production hinges on a third party. What if you push a broken build that your tests didn't cover, and GitHub goes down when you have the patch prepared? What if Travis goes down? Third-party services being in the critical path for applying code to systems is a recipe for outages and other trauma. If it impacts you enough to come to HN and leave the comment I replied to, you're doing it wrong -- there had absolutely better be a failsafe that does not involve GitHub and Travis in your architecture.
    - plorkyeran 12y ago
      Two third parties, even. Github's uptime is good enough that I don't see anything inherently awful about a workflow that makes development difficult when Github is down, but any production deployment process that strictly requires anything beyond a working internet connection and a working server to deploy to is insane.
      - Aqueous 12y ago
        Works pretty well for me. The argument you just made could have - and has - been about any other piece of infrastructure that we now work with third parties for. DNS, EMail, managed hosting, VPS hosting, off-site backups, etc, etc etc. I rely on GitHub to store my code and handle code sharing from separated networks behind NAT - why can't I rely on it for code deployment? The days of isolating yourself from third parties are over be cause it really doesn't make sense to spend a bunch of man hours setting up and maintaining an infrastructure that GitHub - with the rare exception of tonight - specializes in and has an entire staff dedicated to keeping up and running. Third parties have become mission critical because they save money and time and are generally reliable. If Travis CI or GitHub stop working I can do a number of things if I really need to deploy - for instance, push to production anyway, which, btw, is also hosted on a third party hosting provider. If several large services start falling like dominoes at once we have bigger problems than just whether my service is running.

Right in the middle of a major push to production. Awesome.

akerl_ 12y ago

It's too bad git requires a central server.

AYBABTME 12y ago
How is this a useful comment? Everybody knows that Git is distributed. Everytime Github's down, somebody feels the urge to remind everybody else about that. Github's not only Git. Lots of services integrate with Github. Stuff like continuous integration, continuous deployment. If your system is built on those things, Github being down will prevent you from deploying. What's the alternative, replicate everything in-house/self hosted? Should startup stop using third party service providers?
- akerl_ 12y ago
  If your workflow involves services that integrate with GitHub, you should have a plan for when GitHub is not available. You've got your source code elsewhere, you should have docs and procedures for running the tests in your own dev environments and for utilizing whatever staging/deploy process you prefer without GitHub as an intermediary. I continue to post comments like that because while I love GitHub, watching the community put all their eggs in GitHub's basket, especially when GitHub lives on top of a tool designed to avoid SPoFs, is concerning.
  - hamburglar 12y ago
    100%. GitHub is amazing. GitHub is a wonderful tool. GitHub is also just a service cooked up by a handful of jokers who got enough funding to make it happen, and they do a reasonable job of keeping it running most of the time. I wish them all the best, and yet making my own company's infrastructure reliant on it is not something I'm comfortable with. Sometimes they're going to blow it, and that's ok. If them blowing it means my business is affected, I'm the dummy.
    - skrebbel 12y ago
      > jokers who got enough funding to make it happen While I agree with the general gist of your comment, GitHub was entirely self-funded up until about a year ago or so. they didn't "get" funding, they made real money and reinvested it and grew.
      - hamburglar 12y ago
        Fine, bootstrapping jokers are my favorite kind of jokers. No offense intended. My point is it's just a small company with no SLA, express or implied. It could have been anybody with the same great idea, and just because they had a great idea doesn't make them automatically reliable enough to pin your infrastructure on.
  - brokenparser 12y ago
    > especially when GitHub lives on top of a tool designed to avoid SPoFs You're saying it as if it were a bad thing.
    - akerl_ 12y ago
      No? The fact that GitHub is based on a distributed tool is a large part of what makes it so awesome. I can take advantage of the sweet social/collaborative elements of GitHub without locking myself to a central server. If the lower-level they used weren't so open/distributed, I doubt GitHub would have taken off like it has.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  What's the alternative, replicate everything in-house/self hosted? Erm... Yes? You write that as if hosting your own repository is somehow a foolish or implausible thing to do. Should startup stop using third party service providers? Stop? Maybe, maybe not, it obviously depends on the circumstances. Stop relying on them without a back-up plan? Absolutely. If you can't run your essential systems without GitHub, or any other third party system that isn't under your direct control, then you need better contingency planning.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago

Do you and I have a different definition of "production?" GitHub going down impacts your deploys?

Aqueous 12y ago
If you're using a cloud running test service like Travis CI pushing to GitHub can trigger your whole deployment process starting with running the unit and integration tests.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  Now you deploying production hinges on a third party. What if you push a broken build that your tests didn't cover, and GitHub goes down when you have the patch prepared? What if Travis goes down? Third-party services being in the critical path for applying code to systems is a recipe for outages and other trauma. If it impacts you enough to come to HN and leave the comment I replied to, you're doing it wrong -- there had absolutely better be a failsafe that does not involve GitHub and Travis in your architecture.
  - plorkyeran 12y ago
    Two third parties, even. Github's uptime is good enough that I don't see anything inherently awful about a workflow that makes development difficult when Github is down, but any production deployment process that strictly requires anything beyond a working internet connection and a working server to deploy to is insane.
    - Aqueous 12y ago
      Works pretty well for me. The argument you just made could have - and has - been about any other piece of infrastructure that we now work with third parties for. DNS, EMail, managed hosting, VPS hosting, off-site backups, etc, etc etc. I rely on GitHub to store my code and handle code sharing from separated networks behind NAT - why can't I rely on it for code deployment? The days of isolating yourself from third parties are over be cause it really doesn't make sense to spend a bunch of man hours setting up and maintaining an infrastructure that GitHub - with the rare exception of tonight - specializes in and has an entire staff dedicated to keeping up and running. Third parties have become mission critical because they save money and time and are generally reliable. If Travis CI or GitHub stop working I can do a number of things if I really need to deploy - for instance, push to production anyway, which, btw, is also hosted on a third party hosting provider. If several large services start falling like dominoes at once we have bigger problems than just whether my service is running.