4 ms·

I'm not a fan of solutions like git-annex, every time I've seen people try to do this type of stuff, two years down the line they end up having built a buggy kn

by namdnay 12y ago

I'm not a fan of solutions like git-annex, every time I've seen people try to do this type of stuff, two years down the line they end up having built a buggy knockoff of maven/gradle. Why not do things cleanly from the start? The entry barrier is really not that high, and the benefits are huge. Then again maybe I'm a bit psycho-rigid on build management :)

stsp 12y ago
You're absolute right from my experience. I"ve seen many shops using svn:externals to tie build dependencies together. And now that git is starting to see wider adoption within industry (not just software companies) the same is attempted with git submodules and git annex. It's horrible because this is not the use case these features were designed for, but people try anyway and eventually run into road blocks. This tends to happen especially in shops that migrate off process-heavy monsters like clearcase and MKS. These tools do a lot more than just version control, and no open source version control system by itself matches what users of these systems expect. You have to throw at least an issue tracker and a good build tool into the mix as well.
- sytse 12y ago
  Totally agree, big organizations need something integrated. With GitLab we include the issue tracker and build tool you mentioned as well as having git-annex for large binaries.
hosh 12y ago
Have you checked out ipfs?
Xylakant 12y ago
> The entry barrier is really not that high, and the benefits are huge. Because of "we'll just add a submodule and we don't need a build system and it's only a single one and we'll replace that with a proper build tooling as soon as we have time". And then it's only a second one and suddenly submodules pop up like mushrooms after a light summer rain. It requires planning and forethought, just like a lot of things that should be an obvious huge benefit, but planning and forethought are in short supply in this industry.
jrochkind1 12y ago
What are you suggesting the right way from the start is? Just using maven/gradle?
- namdnay 12y ago
  A million times yes, if only for the dependency management side. Can you remember the dark ages of having to download libraries from the internet and check them into your source? Arghhhhh
mmagin 12y ago
git-annex is a tool for versioning files with git that you don't want to actually store IN git. It is not a build automation system.

by namdnay 12y ago

stsp 12y ago

You're absolute right from my experience. I"ve seen many shops using svn:externals to tie build dependencies together. And now that git is starting to see wider adoption within industry (not just software companies) the same is attempted with git submodules and git annex. It's horrible because this is not the use case these features were designed for, but people try anyway and eventually run into road blocks. This tends to happen especially in shops that migrate off process-heavy monsters like clearcase and MKS. These tools do a lot more than just version control, and no open source version control system by itself matches what users of these systems expect. You have to throw at least an issue tracker and a good build tool into the mix as well.

sytse 12y ago
Totally agree, big organizations need something integrated. With GitLab we include the issue tracker and build tool you mentioned as well as having git-annex for large binaries.

hosh 12y ago

Have you checked out ipfs?

Xylakant 12y ago

> The entry barrier is really not that high, and the benefits are huge. Because of "we'll just add a submodule and we don't need a build system and it's only a single one and we'll replace that with a proper build tooling as soon as we have time". And then it's only a second one and suddenly submodules pop up like mushrooms after a light summer rain. It requires planning and forethought, just like a lot of things that should be an obvious huge benefit, but planning and forethought are in short supply in this industry.

jrochkind1 12y ago

What are you suggesting the right way from the start is? Just using maven/gradle?

namdnay 12y ago
A million times yes, if only for the dependency management side. Can you remember the dark ages of having to download libraries from the internet and check them into your source? Arghhhhh

mmagin 12y ago

git-annex is a tool for versioning files with git that you don't want to actually store IN git. It is not a build automation system.