[Discuss] seeking places for good discussion about GNU/Linux programming topics

[Bill Ricker]

I'm doing scattershot prototyping/"remembering how to code" in Python,
>

That's decent choice today for such.
( my own career arc was Assm & PL/1 & Fortran → C & SQL → Prolog →SmallTalk
→ObjectiveC →C++ →Perl ; which omits a smattering of APL and LISP along the
way. )

but expect to move to C in the near future.
>

For new projects, Rust and Go/Flutter seem to be the good choices for
different purposes.
(BLU.org Video archive includes a pitch for Cross-platform Go/Flutter from
Randal Schwartz <http://blu.org/cgi-bin/calendar/2022-feb>.)

> By Ubuntu forums, do you specifically mean those at ubuntuforums.org?
>

I think that's the official place to discuss Ubuntu API coding as well as
use.

The Stack Exchange sites are emphatic that they are not the place for
> discussion or open ended questions. I've seen the anti-chit-chat policy
> referred to when a post included social niceties.
>

right, it's very much Q&A. which can be very useful but not for background,
understanding why it's this way, etc.

and it's a very strange form of community building

Maybe people go to "chat" systems for what I'm looking for? I'm used to
> having actual people around, but between the pandemic and no longer
> working, that's a challenge.
>

In the old days, we had had USEnet groups for each language and each API.
*sigh*
There are still some IRC servers.
I gather the ^kids^ † are using "discord" for chat, and that it has topic
areas?

† kids = under 50  :-D .

Maybe I haven't found the right link, but it looks like GitLab is going
> commercial and placing restrictions on their free offerings.


GL had free private repos before GH, but adding some restrictions /
encouragement to upsell are alas sensible for GL, not being attached to
deep pockets (M$) who are harvesting even the private repos for copyright
or trade-secret code fragments to put into their CoPilot product :-/ .

If you declare the repo a FLOSS project from day one, either GL or GH will
still host it free, likely forever, right?

>From my P-o-V, biggest differences between GH and GL are

   - a Project can have a Wiki (GL) or Project can have a Pages website
   (GH) but not both;
   - GH has CoPilot dubiosity, sells services to agencies that some object
   to, but has M$ deep pockets for stability
   - GL has a tool to import / move a GH project  ; IDK if there is a
   reverse tool at GH.
   - Both have CI/CD action extensions, most folks are more familiar with
   GH's than GL's
   - GH names offers-of-commits from a clone repo "Pull Requests", while GL
   calls them "Merge Requests". Same thing.
   - Both have Issues trackers   (3d party Issue trackers mostly now
   integrate with GH, might integrate with GL as well - relevant only in Corp
   environment really)
   - I'm more familiar with GH Pull Request workflow which has Code
   Reviews.   AFAIK, GH has more controls/depth useful in corp environment (or
   LARGE FLOSS projects) than GL. Probably doesn't matter for your project.

I found <http://sourcehut.org>... Neither of these new ones has much of a
> track record.
>

neither even on my radar.

I'd probably put my own private repo on a DO/DH/AWS VM before i paid a
no-track-record provider.

And Git (one word) gives you the opportunity to change hosting mid-project
fairly painlessly.
(Changing name of *master* to *main* mid project is harder! Breaks things.)

Since my semi-retirment side-gig is a consultancy, and i also ^work^ (free)
with FLOSS &  .ORGs, i usually have 2-3 repositories configured in my local
checkout's .git/config , with personal GH/GL account clone or consultancy
account clone as '*origin*' and the client or FLOSS project repo as '
*upstream*' .  If client has GH workflow, our clones will be on GH.
Sometimes there's a private repo on a VM that is invisible, for one reason
or another. (e.g. I deploy certain web pages by git-push'ing to a naked
repo on the web-server, the .httpdconf file blocks serving the .git* files
and itself; it's slicker than WebDAV was, and works. GH pages are a better
implementation for things one doesn't mind having served by GH.)

> For what it's worth, it looks like the Linux kernel's primary repository
> is on GitHub (while git itself is at kernel.org). If GitHub goes rogue,
> I wouldn't be the only one dealing with it; I guess that's a little
> reassuring (I cross the street in groups).
>

And with GH's owner M$ now being a major user of Linux in their corporate
Cloud, they're not going to shaft Linux.
Which is kind of hard for some of us Oldsters to internalize, remembering
the old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish pattern.

(*One could argue CoPilot is shafting FLOSS in a different way but that's a
different fight*, *not for this thread.*
*Except that it makes them want to keep us warm and comfy storing code on
GH and not looking too close at CoPilot*.)

// Bill