16 ms·

Vim is moving to GitHub

462 points by brunosutic 12y ago

brunosutic 12y ago
I personally am very happy about this. It will benefit the vim project tremendously.
- sfk 12y ago
  I don't think that projects actually attract serious contributors by moving to GitHub.
  - iagooar 12y ago
    Would you elaborate? What is a serious contributor in your opinion?
    - sfk 12y ago
      Someone who cares about the project and the code rather than peripheral issues like the choice of VCS, the hosting location or "social coding".
      - Alupis 12y ago
        Github allows for people to discover projects to be passionate about that they may not have discovered otherwise. Before Github, the primary means individuals discovered projects was just by stumbling upon random websites... often times ones that hadn't been updated in who-knows-how-long. Github clearly shows the health of a project by providing at a glance how long ago the most recent commit was, how many people have contributed to the project, how many people are "following" the project, how many contributions via Pull Requests are pending, etc.
      - iagooar 12y ago
        I think that given the popularity of Github, there is a good chance of finding serious contributors.
      - detaro 12y ago
        i wouldn't call them "peripheral" if they have in parts led to a fork of the project already (See discussion of of vim contribution process and it's pains otherwise in this thread)
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - brunosutic 12y ago
    Even if it attracts "just" serious code-reviewers that provide detailed bug reports that's a big win.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    I disagree. I've been loosely involved in 2 open source projects which were previously hosted on self-hosted SVN repos. After a move to Github, not only did the projects pick up new developers, but also gained a bit of visibility. Github is something unique in my experience... it really is the "place to be" for developers wanting visibility (for any reason). A lot of folks use it as sort of a resume of skill and activeness in the community, and having public projects contributed to under their account serves to bolster that reputation.
    - sfk 12y ago
      And is it a good thing to outsource one's resume to a company that somehow, at some point has to justify a $100.000.000 investment by Andreesen & Horowitz? How are they going to do that? By selling private repos?
      - Alupis 12y ago
        > How are they going to do that? By selling private repos? Well, yes. Github makes most of their revenue from Github Enterprise ($5,000+ per year) for large organizations.
        sfk 12y ago
        And that revenue is large enough to justify the investment?
  - to3m 12y ago
    It's possible. But if they just attract drive-by patches that people like, that's fine too. Contributions from a wider range of people, that add features they're looking for (no matter how minor) will make the project more appealing to more people. The GitHub workflow for this - submitting a patch to a project you're not heavily involved with - is very good, and probably a large contributor to the way GitHub is eating everything. No need to subscribe to a mailing list, and no need to get involved with discussions you might not be interested in. But you can easily commit to staying subscribed to your pull request/issue thread. Of course, that may not suit all changes - but as a default, I think this arrangement a good one.
  - floatboth 12y ago
    Yeah. Why would anyone on GitHub contribute to the original Vim when there's Neovim?
    - pydave 12y ago
      Vim is still usable for day-to-day work: it works on Windows, it has a gui binary, it's a stable build and not a beta. People are going to have bug reports/fixes for what they're using. Also, fixes seem to be flowing from vim to neovim.
  - josinalvo 12y ago
    I'll offer you a 10$ to 5$ bet: Take 10 migrated github repos at random (1) If they did not increase(2) the number of serious(3) contributors, I lose 10$. If they did, you lose 5$. (1) random sampling: take a repo by using the last digits of a public number (like, say, the nasdaq index). Eliminate repo if "too small" or "not migrated", until you have 10 (2) compare 1 year before github to 1 year after. This gives you three numbers: at start of first year(A), at start of migration(B), at end of migration(C). N1=B/A, N2=C/B. If avg(N1) not > avg(N2), you win (3) serious means 20 contribs in the year (further terms will be settled upon if you want to bet, before you accept) --- (btw, I think it might not mean much to VIM that it moved =P)
    - sfk 12y ago
      You misunderstand completely. Of course small random projects like flappy-bird-in-cobol may benefit from a migration. I'm talking about well established projects. Also, the metrics you propose are quite meaningless. There are contributions that actually waste core developer's time but are grudgingly accepted either for political reasons or to shut up the proponent. These kinds of contributions are certain to increase by a migration to GitHub.
      - josinalvo 12y ago
        Ok. How would you quantify "meaningfull contributions" ?
- bstar77 12y ago
  It's highly unlikely that it's going to do anything to improve vim. It seems this is being done out of necessity, namely google sunsetting Google Code. I could be wrong, but it's unlikely that Bram has had a change of heart regarding encouraging contributions. NeoVim has my full attention; it's a forward thinking project that is doing everything I hoped Bram would do. With that said, it's going to take years before distros start standardizing on neovim, but it will happen.
  - sigzero 12y ago
    It may happen.
caniszczyk 12y ago
Nice
Zikes 12y ago
Is this an official migration or a rolling snapshot?
- mkarklins 12y ago
  Since 'code.google.com' is shutting down, this, most likely, will be the official repo.
- brunosutic 12y ago
  That was created by vim creator and maintainer Bram himself. Link to where he made a post about that: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vim_dev/Io5A_Zir--k/faPCHWYfvyAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vim_dev/Io5A_Zir--k/fa...
  - aharris88 12y ago
    He said that this is just to try out github for now. And for now the official development will be on Google Code. And then when he's ready to move it over, he'll wipe the current repository on github. "To see how well this works I have created a SNAPSHOT of the repository. This way we can try it out. "
thomasdziedzic 12y ago
This is an official migration. Here is a link to an actual source since I was originally skeptical because I know vim uses mercurial and that there have been unsuccessful discussions in the past. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.vim.devel/49968 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.vim.devel/49968 Looks like as a result, vim is also switching to git for development.
- gpvos 12y ago
  It is indeed official, but it's a try-out, not yet an actual migration. >NOTE: Before the actual migration the current repository on github will be wiped!
mizzao 12y ago
YES! So many old school projects hosted on janky sites that are immeasurably harder to contribute to. Looking forward to getting them all moved. ...as long as GitHub doesn't become an evil empire of some sort.
- quadrangle 12y ago
  GitHub has done a remarkable job at being less evil than many proprietary companies… but they are doing one very annoying thing: actively undermining the free software movement by (A) getting everyone to use their proprietary tools and (B) craftily undermining the GNU GPL and related licenses by making their license-chooser and choosealicense website designed to discourage GPL use.
  - geon 12y ago
    On a site by and for programmers, it makes sense to discourage GPL in favor of permissive licenses.
    - JoshTriplett 12y ago
      The GPL is designed specifically for programmers, to ensure that they continue to have access to the source they need to hack on projects. Perhaps you meant on a site that's designed to also serve the needs of proprietary programmers, as opposed to just FOSS programmers?
      - crazypyro 12y ago
        Considering the vast majority of programmers are proprietary programmers, at least for most of their week, I would consider the GPL not designed specifically for all programmers, but rather FOSS programmers, which is a minority on Github (and everywhere else, except highly specific communities). It makes sense for Github to promote other licenses.
        JoshTriplett 12y ago
nwah1 12y ago
NeoVim probably also inspired this.
- sigzero 12y ago
  No, not at all. Zero in fact. It had to move. If it didn't have to move it wouldn't be.
farresito 12y ago
Nice to hear that. It's way more comfortable to report bugs in Github than mailing lists. I will make it easier to constribute, as well.
ggreer 12y ago
Google Code is shutting down this year[1], so the Vim-dev mailing list discussed migration[2]. GitHub is the most popular host for open source projects, and Google Code has an export tool for it[3], so the switch makes a lot of sense. That said, Vim's development method is rather conservative. Vim was created in 1988, but source control wasn't used until 2004 and Bram is the only one with write access. There are no pull requests. You have to send patches to the mailing list, where they are often dropped or forgotten. Hopefully, GitHub's features will modernize things a little and make it easier for more people to contribute to Vim. 1. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go... 2. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/ehzfCDccmek/PU1sTZNdsTUJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/ehzfCDccmek/PU1sTZNd... 3. https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/
- zzalpha 12y ago
  At minimum, it makes it a lot easier for a viable fork to pop up if necessary. For example, I'll bet it'll make it simpler for neovim to keep up-to-date with changes in the upstream.
  - guelo 12y ago
    Why would the source of the remote make a difference for fetching from an upstream?
    - mackwic 12y ago
      Technically, it doesn't. In practice, using a unified and polished interface like Github make things easier.
      - Crito 12y ago
        I feel like actually creating a fork of vim that is viable for the community is a much higher bar. If that first bar stops somebody, is it likely that they would have cleared the second bar?
desireco42 12y ago
Woo hoo ! Awesome. Also, GitHub becomes sort of a borg. If some Russian kid decides to mess with it like Homakov did a while back, we are all screwed. Congrats Vim.
- otabdeveloper1 12y ago
  > Also, GitHub becomes sort of a borg. If some Russian kid decides to mess with it like Homakov did a while back, we are all screwed. Congrats on you not having a clue what git is.
  - worklogin 12y ago
    Consider how you'd phrase it if your comrade were standing next to you instead of being on the Internet. I understand your point that git is git. The code wouldn't be lost. But it would be an undeniable several months of chaos if Github's servers were wiped. Every project standing up its own site... the open source world would effectively cease development for a short time.
    - jackmaney 12y ago
      Not to mention the companies that use GitHub for hosting their code base in private repos, keeping track of issues, code reviews, etc.
  - na85 12y ago
    Please keep this caustic junk on reddit where it belongs.
    - cdelsolar 12y ago
      Please stop bad-mouthing Reddit.
  - sfk 12y ago
    Git has nothing to do with it: A while ago Homakov had an exploit that gave him write privileges to all GitHub repos. It's remarkable that no one really seems to care.
feld 12y ago
maybe they can tag releases more frequently instead of having a ridiculous amount of patches for each release % grep SHA256 /usr/ports/editors/vim/distinfo | wc -l 559 That's a ridiculous amount of patches that need to be applied.
- feld 12y ago
  turns out this is because FreeBSD's vim port is really bleeding edge / development and not using stable releases. But really, it shouldn't go 500 patches and still have no new release cut...
wijagels 12y ago
This is great, should get some visibility for the project
SEJeff 12y ago
I really do wonder if there will ever be even a semi-official emacs repository on github. I suspect not, but think it would be interesting to see if people contributed to emacs using PRs.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Official or semi-official? Never, unless github's server goes FOSS at some point. When someone attempted to get github mirrors of GNOME or GCC declared "official", the official response was that anything hosted on a proprietary git hosting site should never be official.
  - SEJeff 12y ago
    Afraid you're somewhat incorrect on the GNOME repos. I happen to be one of the org members for the GNOME org on github: https://github.com/gnome https://github.com/gnome It isn't the primary, but it is very much an official mirror. GNOME and the FSF often disagree, even if RMS will have you think otherwise.
    - JoshTriplett 12y ago
      Interesting; thanks for the correction. Last time I'd seen that discussion, I thought the conclusion was that it was a supported mirror (as in, the GNOME project would keep it up to date), just not an endorsed mirror (as in, the GNOME project doesn't officially recommend its use).
      - SEJeff 12y ago
        Guess it depends on whom you ask :)
- kuschku 12y ago
  GitHub? Probably not. But a local instance of GitLab? A lot more realistic, considering it’s Open Source and quite similar to GitHub actually.
yeukhon 12y ago
Slightly off topic, but I am actually surprised "vim" was not a taken user name. Does GitHub grant special projects like vim its name if the name is taken but inactive?
- aharris88 12y ago
  That's a great question.
- htor 12y ago
  I believe you can email github and ask for a certain user name and they'll give it to you if it has no or very little activity. For instance, Ken Thompson joined github a little while ago and he got the user name 'ken'. Don't know how he did that, but I guess it helps being Ken Thompson.
o_syn 12y ago
On an unrelated note, why haven't there been any more modal editors? For example, you could enter a "bold formatting" mode, where you could say type "fun" and it results in "𝐟𝐮𝐧". All these are Unicode characters, so you wouldn't need a separate document format like Word. Presumably one can have a "math" mode where you could type math like you would type regular text obviating the dollar signs and backslashes in LaTeX. As I understand it, LaTeX has an incredibly complicated architecture with multiple layers of macros before the lowest layer of TeX primitives. You could replace all that with Unicode symbols. In math mode you could type "in" and get the Unicode symbol "∊". Then you would be able to copy-paste math and send it over email, instant messaging et cetera, and easily type it with a WYSIWYG editor using a traditional keyboard. Of course, there would be numerous problems with typesetting integration limits, fractions et cetera but I think these can be solved using Unicode and clever programming. I currently do not solve say Group Theory problems on my computer because LaTeX is way too inconvenient. I think on a hypothetical editor with a math "mode", one could touch-type math. Maybe I'm missing something and there are insurmountable obstacles to implementing such a solution. If so, I would be happy if someone could point out what they are. Having different modes seems like a very powerful feature, and I'm just surprised the last editor using modes was written 40 years ago.
- cocoablazing 12y ago
  Take a look at LyX.
- gh02t 12y ago
  What you're describing is an interesting idea and LyX is sort of like that. Mathematica also works pretty similarly, it has different ways of representing and entering equivalent expressions visually (e.g., TraditionalForm or DisplayForm). You can switch modes for a particular cell and the underlying meaning is preserved. There's also a special escape sequence for entering symbols and a lot of symbols have an equivalence with their obvious operators, for instance "x ∈ X" is equivalent to "Element[x, X]". That said, it's really awful at copy-pasting into other programs my experience. But it does a decent job of exporting explicitly, like for instance with TeXForm. Also, a slightly different thing you can do in Vim is to use the conceal feature to visually "collapse" LaTeX escapes into their unicode characters. For example, the document says "\lambda", but it will display as λ (unless you position the cursor on the same line, so that you can edit it). I find it helps reduce visual clutter a bit. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4626 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4626
slashnull 12y ago
What an interesting happenstance... I just ported all my stuff to Neovim earlier this week and everything works out of the box. I just had to cp everything vim to nvim (.vim -> .nvim, .vimrc -> .nvimrc, etc). Unfortunately there are no immediate benefits, but I agree with Neovim's long-term goals, so I suppose I'l be there when we get async plugins written in Lua.
Fice 12y ago
Why is everyone so happy about the whole open source community becoming dependent on a single commercial company?
- ndesaulniers 12y ago
  It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
  - Fice 12y ago
    For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. And, being a huge centralized service, GitHub is very susceptible to censorship (e.g. repos being taken down via DMCA or Russia blocking GitHub until they started to cooperate with the censors). I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement.
    - bacongobbler 12y ago
      > For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. I believe that's more to do with the process than the platform. Having to remember different processes to contribute fixes/features is a pain. I can't count how many times I had to register an account, log into their custom bug tracker, find the darned obscure remote (looking at you, apache SVN), check out, figure out who I have to email the patch... And then doing it all over for a different project makes the entire process a little ridiculous. With Github, it's ridiculously simple: Log in, fork, clone, push, PR, repeat. > I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement. OTOH, having a place to call "home" for FOSS developers generates a better sense of community. It's like hosting a conference across multiple buildings: sure, the venue's big enough to hold X amount of people, but it doesn't seem like there's X people attending if I can't see everyone without having to traverse buildings. Also, > It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
walkingolof 12y ago
Has VIM made any signification improvement in recent memory ?
- bandrami 12y ago
  The inclined plane has shown very little improvement in recent years, too. What exactly would you like changed? I mean, the termlib stuff could be cleaned up, but that's a universal problem more than anything else.
- yetanotherjosh 12y ago
  Has my Grandpa's hammer been significantly improved in recent memory? Nope, still in my toolbox and still my favorite hammer. Ok, ok, not a good analogy but my point is that not everything actually needs constant improvement. There is a cultural bias towards newness and improvement in technology, naturally, but frankly using ViM is one way I manage to escape that on a daily basis and be thankful for stuff that works as well for me today as it did 15 years ago.
- zem 12y ago
  sure! to pick a few highlights, there was tree-style undo, integrated spellchecking and intellisense in v7, folding, diff mode and integrated remote editing and the commandline window in v6, syntax highlighting and vimscript in v5. http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html for the whole list.
shmerl 12y ago
I was just considering switching to neovim since it supports 24 bit color in the terminal.
- alxndr 12y ago
  I made the switch a week or two ago, and it was pretty painless. Kept most of my previous configuration, but only brought it over once I used it and missed it (to find out what I'm acutally using). The one thing I haven't set up yet is YouCompleteMe (or an autocomplete replacement that uses neovim's threading), as at a quick glance it looked like it would be more than just a few minutes' setup.
mreiland 12y ago
oh god, what happens if someone adds the vim repo to vundle? Please don't do it, the space time continuum will collapse. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, AT WORK, OR ANYWHERE.

462 points by brunosutic 12y ago

brunosutic 12y ago

I personally am very happy about this. It will benefit the vim project tremendously.

sfk 12y ago
I don't think that projects actually attract serious contributors by moving to GitHub.
- iagooar 12y ago
  Would you elaborate? What is a serious contributor in your opinion?
  - sfk 12y ago
    Someone who cares about the project and the code rather than peripheral issues like the choice of VCS, the hosting location or "social coding".
    - Alupis 12y ago
      Github allows for people to discover projects to be passionate about that they may not have discovered otherwise. Before Github, the primary means individuals discovered projects was just by stumbling upon random websites... often times ones that hadn't been updated in who-knows-how-long. Github clearly shows the health of a project by providing at a glance how long ago the most recent commit was, how many people have contributed to the project, how many people are "following" the project, how many contributions via Pull Requests are pending, etc.
    - iagooar 12y ago
      I think that given the popularity of Github, there is a good chance of finding serious contributors.
    - detaro 12y ago
      i wouldn't call them "peripheral" if they have in parts led to a fork of the project already (See discussion of of vim contribution process and it's pains otherwise in this thread)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- brunosutic 12y ago
  Even if it attracts "just" serious code-reviewers that provide detailed bug reports that's a big win.
- Alupis 12y ago
  I disagree. I've been loosely involved in 2 open source projects which were previously hosted on self-hosted SVN repos. After a move to Github, not only did the projects pick up new developers, but also gained a bit of visibility. Github is something unique in my experience... it really is the "place to be" for developers wanting visibility (for any reason). A lot of folks use it as sort of a resume of skill and activeness in the community, and having public projects contributed to under their account serves to bolster that reputation.
  - sfk 12y ago
    And is it a good thing to outsource one's resume to a company that somehow, at some point has to justify a $100.000.000 investment by Andreesen & Horowitz? How are they going to do that? By selling private repos?
    - Alupis 12y ago
      > How are they going to do that? By selling private repos? Well, yes. Github makes most of their revenue from Github Enterprise ($5,000+ per year) for large organizations.
      - sfk 12y ago
        And that revenue is large enough to justify the investment?
- to3m 12y ago
  It's possible. But if they just attract drive-by patches that people like, that's fine too. Contributions from a wider range of people, that add features they're looking for (no matter how minor) will make the project more appealing to more people. The GitHub workflow for this - submitting a patch to a project you're not heavily involved with - is very good, and probably a large contributor to the way GitHub is eating everything. No need to subscribe to a mailing list, and no need to get involved with discussions you might not be interested in. But you can easily commit to staying subscribed to your pull request/issue thread. Of course, that may not suit all changes - but as a default, I think this arrangement a good one.
- floatboth 12y ago
  Yeah. Why would anyone on GitHub contribute to the original Vim when there's Neovim?
  - pydave 12y ago
    Vim is still usable for day-to-day work: it works on Windows, it has a gui binary, it's a stable build and not a beta. People are going to have bug reports/fixes for what they're using. Also, fixes seem to be flowing from vim to neovim.
- josinalvo 12y ago
  I'll offer you a 10$ to 5$ bet: Take 10 migrated github repos at random (1) If they did not increase(2) the number of serious(3) contributors, I lose 10$. If they did, you lose 5$. (1) random sampling: take a repo by using the last digits of a public number (like, say, the nasdaq index). Eliminate repo if "too small" or "not migrated", until you have 10 (2) compare 1 year before github to 1 year after. This gives you three numbers: at start of first year(A), at start of migration(B), at end of migration(C). N1=B/A, N2=C/B. If avg(N1) not > avg(N2), you win (3) serious means 20 contribs in the year (further terms will be settled upon if you want to bet, before you accept) --- (btw, I think it might not mean much to VIM that it moved =P)
  - sfk 12y ago
    You misunderstand completely. Of course small random projects like flappy-bird-in-cobol may benefit from a migration. I'm talking about well established projects. Also, the metrics you propose are quite meaningless. There are contributions that actually waste core developer's time but are grudgingly accepted either for political reasons or to shut up the proponent. These kinds of contributions are certain to increase by a migration to GitHub.
    - josinalvo 12y ago
      Ok. How would you quantify "meaningfull contributions" ?
bstar77 12y ago
It's highly unlikely that it's going to do anything to improve vim. It seems this is being done out of necessity, namely google sunsetting Google Code. I could be wrong, but it's unlikely that Bram has had a change of heart regarding encouraging contributions. NeoVim has my full attention; it's a forward thinking project that is doing everything I hoped Bram would do. With that said, it's going to take years before distros start standardizing on neovim, but it will happen.
- sigzero 12y ago
  It may happen.

caniszczyk 12y ago

Nice

Zikes 12y ago

Is this an official migration or a rolling snapshot?

mkarklins 12y ago
Since 'code.google.com' is shutting down, this, most likely, will be the official repo.
brunosutic 12y ago
That was created by vim creator and maintainer Bram himself. Link to where he made a post about that: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vim_dev/Io5A_Zir--k/faPCHWYfvyAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vim_dev/Io5A_Zir--k/fa...
- aharris88 12y ago
  He said that this is just to try out github for now. And for now the official development will be on Google Code. And then when he's ready to move it over, he'll wipe the current repository on github. "To see how well this works I have created a SNAPSHOT of the repository. This way we can try it out. "

thomasdziedzic 12y ago

This is an official migration. Here is a link to an actual source since I was originally skeptical because I know vim uses mercurial and that there have been unsuccessful discussions in the past. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.vim.devel/49968 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.vim.devel/49968 Looks like as a result, vim is also switching to git for development.

gpvos 12y ago
It is indeed official, but it's a try-out, not yet an actual migration. >NOTE: Before the actual migration the current repository on github will be wiped!

mizzao 12y ago

YES! So many old school projects hosted on janky sites that are immeasurably harder to contribute to. Looking forward to getting them all moved. ...as long as GitHub doesn't become an evil empire of some sort.

quadrangle 12y ago
GitHub has done a remarkable job at being less evil than many proprietary companies… but they are doing one very annoying thing: actively undermining the free software movement by (A) getting everyone to use their proprietary tools and (B) craftily undermining the GNU GPL and related licenses by making their license-chooser and choosealicense website designed to discourage GPL use.
- geon 12y ago
  On a site by and for programmers, it makes sense to discourage GPL in favor of permissive licenses.
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    The GPL is designed specifically for programmers, to ensure that they continue to have access to the source they need to hack on projects. Perhaps you meant on a site that's designed to also serve the needs of proprietary programmers, as opposed to just FOSS programmers?
    - crazypyro 12y ago
      Considering the vast majority of programmers are proprietary programmers, at least for most of their week, I would consider the GPL not designed specifically for all programmers, but rather FOSS programmers, which is a minority on Github (and everywhere else, except highly specific communities). It makes sense for Github to promote other licenses.
      - JoshTriplett 12y ago

nwah1 12y ago

NeoVim probably also inspired this.

sigzero 12y ago
No, not at all. Zero in fact. It had to move. If it didn't have to move it wouldn't be.

farresito 12y ago

Nice to hear that. It's way more comfortable to report bugs in Github than mailing lists. I will make it easier to constribute, as well.

ggreer 12y ago

Google Code is shutting down this year[1], so the Vim-dev mailing list discussed migration[2]. GitHub is the most popular host for open source projects, and Google Code has an export tool for it[3], so the switch makes a lot of sense. That said, Vim's development method is rather conservative. Vim was created in 1988, but source control wasn't used until 2004 and Bram is the only one with write access. There are no pull requests. You have to send patches to the mailing list, where they are often dropped or forgotten. Hopefully, GitHub's features will modernize things a little and make it easier for more people to contribute to Vim. 1. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go... 2. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/ehzfCDccmek/PU1sTZNdsTUJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/ehzfCDccmek/PU1sTZNd... 3. https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/

zzalpha 12y ago
At minimum, it makes it a lot easier for a viable fork to pop up if necessary. For example, I'll bet it'll make it simpler for neovim to keep up-to-date with changes in the upstream.
- guelo 12y ago
  Why would the source of the remote make a difference for fetching from an upstream?
  - mackwic 12y ago
    Technically, it doesn't. In practice, using a unified and polished interface like Github make things easier.
    - Crito 12y ago
      I feel like actually creating a fork of vim that is viable for the community is a much higher bar. If that first bar stops somebody, is it likely that they would have cleared the second bar?

desireco42 12y ago

Woo hoo ! Awesome. Also, GitHub becomes sort of a borg. If some Russian kid decides to mess with it like Homakov did a while back, we are all screwed. Congrats Vim.

otabdeveloper1 12y ago
> Also, GitHub becomes sort of a borg. If some Russian kid decides to mess with it like Homakov did a while back, we are all screwed. Congrats on you not having a clue what git is.
- worklogin 12y ago
  Consider how you'd phrase it if your comrade were standing next to you instead of being on the Internet. I understand your point that git is git. The code wouldn't be lost. But it would be an undeniable several months of chaos if Github's servers were wiped. Every project standing up its own site... the open source world would effectively cease development for a short time.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    Not to mention the companies that use GitHub for hosting their code base in private repos, keeping track of issues, code reviews, etc.
- na85 12y ago
  Please keep this caustic junk on reddit where it belongs.
  - cdelsolar 12y ago
    Please stop bad-mouthing Reddit.
- sfk 12y ago
  Git has nothing to do with it: A while ago Homakov had an exploit that gave him write privileges to all GitHub repos. It's remarkable that no one really seems to care.

feld 12y ago

maybe they can tag releases more frequently instead of having a ridiculous amount of patches for each release % grep SHA256 /usr/ports/editors/vim/distinfo | wc -l 559 That's a ridiculous amount of patches that need to be applied.

feld 12y ago
turns out this is because FreeBSD's vim port is really bleeding edge / development and not using stable releases. But really, it shouldn't go 500 patches and still have no new release cut...

wijagels 12y ago

This is great, should get some visibility for the project

SEJeff 12y ago

I really do wonder if there will ever be even a semi-official emacs repository on github. I suspect not, but think it would be interesting to see if people contributed to emacs using PRs.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
Official or semi-official? Never, unless github's server goes FOSS at some point. When someone attempted to get github mirrors of GNOME or GCC declared "official", the official response was that anything hosted on a proprietary git hosting site should never be official.
- SEJeff 12y ago
  Afraid you're somewhat incorrect on the GNOME repos. I happen to be one of the org members for the GNOME org on github: https://github.com/gnome https://github.com/gnome It isn't the primary, but it is very much an official mirror. GNOME and the FSF often disagree, even if RMS will have you think otherwise.
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    Interesting; thanks for the correction. Last time I'd seen that discussion, I thought the conclusion was that it was a supported mirror (as in, the GNOME project would keep it up to date), just not an endorsed mirror (as in, the GNOME project doesn't officially recommend its use).
    - SEJeff 12y ago
      Guess it depends on whom you ask :)
kuschku 12y ago
GitHub? Probably not. But a local instance of GitLab? A lot more realistic, considering it’s Open Source and quite similar to GitHub actually.

yeukhon 12y ago

Slightly off topic, but I am actually surprised "vim" was not a taken user name. Does GitHub grant special projects like vim its name if the name is taken but inactive?

aharris88 12y ago
That's a great question.
htor 12y ago
I believe you can email github and ask for a certain user name and they'll give it to you if it has no or very little activity. For instance, Ken Thompson joined github a little while ago and he got the user name 'ken'. Don't know how he did that, but I guess it helps being Ken Thompson.

o_syn 12y ago

On an unrelated note, why haven't there been any more modal editors? For example, you could enter a "bold formatting" mode, where you could say type "fun" and it results in "𝐟𝐮𝐧". All these are Unicode characters, so you wouldn't need a separate document format like Word. Presumably one can have a "math" mode where you could type math like you would type regular text obviating the dollar signs and backslashes in LaTeX. As I understand it, LaTeX has an incredibly complicated architecture with multiple layers of macros before the lowest layer of TeX primitives. You could replace all that with Unicode symbols. In math mode you could type "in" and get the Unicode symbol "∊". Then you would be able to copy-paste math and send it over email, instant messaging et cetera, and easily type it with a WYSIWYG editor using a traditional keyboard. Of course, there would be numerous problems with typesetting integration limits, fractions et cetera but I think these can be solved using Unicode and clever programming. I currently do not solve say Group Theory problems on my computer because LaTeX is way too inconvenient. I think on a hypothetical editor with a math "mode", one could touch-type math. Maybe I'm missing something and there are insurmountable obstacles to implementing such a solution. If so, I would be happy if someone could point out what they are. Having different modes seems like a very powerful feature, and I'm just surprised the last editor using modes was written 40 years ago.

cocoablazing 12y ago
Take a look at LyX.
gh02t 12y ago
What you're describing is an interesting idea and LyX is sort of like that. Mathematica also works pretty similarly, it has different ways of representing and entering equivalent expressions visually (e.g., TraditionalForm or DisplayForm). You can switch modes for a particular cell and the underlying meaning is preserved. There's also a special escape sequence for entering symbols and a lot of symbols have an equivalence with their obvious operators, for instance "x ∈ X" is equivalent to "Element[x, X]". That said, it's really awful at copy-pasting into other programs my experience. But it does a decent job of exporting explicitly, like for instance with TeXForm. Also, a slightly different thing you can do in Vim is to use the conceal feature to visually "collapse" LaTeX escapes into their unicode characters. For example, the document says "\lambda", but it will display as λ (unless you position the cursor on the same line, so that you can edit it). I find it helps reduce visual clutter a bit. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4626 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4626

slashnull 12y ago

What an interesting happenstance... I just ported all my stuff to Neovim earlier this week and everything works out of the box. I just had to cp everything vim to nvim (.vim -> .nvim, .vimrc -> .nvimrc, etc). Unfortunately there are no immediate benefits, but I agree with Neovim's long-term goals, so I suppose I'l be there when we get async plugins written in Lua.

Fice 12y ago

Why is everyone so happy about the whole open source community becoming dependent on a single commercial company?

ndesaulniers 12y ago
It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
- Fice 12y ago
  For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. And, being a huge centralized service, GitHub is very susceptible to censorship (e.g. repos being taken down via DMCA or Russia blocking GitHub until they started to cooperate with the censors). I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement.
  - bacongobbler 12y ago
    > For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. I believe that's more to do with the process than the platform. Having to remember different processes to contribute fixes/features is a pain. I can't count how many times I had to register an account, log into their custom bug tracker, find the darned obscure remote (looking at you, apache SVN), check out, figure out who I have to email the patch... And then doing it all over for a different project makes the entire process a little ridiculous. With Github, it's ridiculously simple: Log in, fork, clone, push, PR, repeat. > I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement. OTOH, having a place to call "home" for FOSS developers generates a better sense of community. It's like hosting a conference across multiple buildings: sure, the venue's big enough to hold X amount of people, but it doesn't seem like there's X people attending if I can't see everyone without having to traverse buildings. Also, > It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.

walkingolof 12y ago

Has VIM made any signification improvement in recent memory ?

bandrami 12y ago
The inclined plane has shown very little improvement in recent years, too. What exactly would you like changed? I mean, the termlib stuff could be cleaned up, but that's a universal problem more than anything else.
yetanotherjosh 12y ago
Has my Grandpa's hammer been significantly improved in recent memory? Nope, still in my toolbox and still my favorite hammer. Ok, ok, not a good analogy but my point is that not everything actually needs constant improvement. There is a cultural bias towards newness and improvement in technology, naturally, but frankly using ViM is one way I manage to escape that on a daily basis and be thankful for stuff that works as well for me today as it did 15 years ago.
zem 12y ago
sure! to pick a few highlights, there was tree-style undo, integrated spellchecking and intellisense in v7, folding, diff mode and integrated remote editing and the commandline window in v6, syntax highlighting and vimscript in v5. http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/version7.html for the whole list.

shmerl 12y ago

I was just considering switching to neovim since it supports 24 bit color in the terminal.

alxndr 12y ago
I made the switch a week or two ago, and it was pretty painless. Kept most of my previous configuration, but only brought it over once I used it and missed it (to find out what I'm acutally using). The one thing I haven't set up yet is YouCompleteMe (or an autocomplete replacement that uses neovim's threading), as at a quick glance it looked like it would be more than just a few minutes' setup.

mreiland 12y ago

oh god, what happens if someone adds the vim repo to vundle? Please don't do it, the space time continuum will collapse. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, AT WORK, OR ANYWHERE.