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

[Daniel M Gessel]

On 2022-10-28 22:52, Bill Ricker wrote:
> For Dan -
> A 4 year old Linux Journal comparison of GL vs GH that takes a very 
> FLOSS-forward attitude is archived as
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180717143432/https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitl 
> <https://web.archive.org/web/20180717143432/https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitlab>
Interesting - thanks.

I should have stated up front that my project is in the conceptual stage 
(I guess if I don't get anywhere that makes it vaporware?) My apologies 
for omitting the fact that it's a year or more away from being even 
potentially interesting to anyone.

GitHub seems like it's 50%+ about the community, which is something I'm 
looking for with the isolation of the pandemic and retirement. I was 
never able to follow fashion to the latest nightclub or other social 
venue, but it might be worth thinking that way: GitHub is the current 
hotspot, but be ready to head wherever the cool people go next.
> I coincidentally stumbled upon it when the author posted his Mastodon 
> and Addrs as part of the current Twitter-verse where is the exit drill.
Speaking of thin skins, twitter was too much for me at one time, and 
when I tried to rejoin my account ended up being locked and I gave up.

I'm not following what's really going on there though. I don't keep up 
with Elon Musk like some; my wife, who's from Cape Town, lumps him in 
with other rich South Africans so I have a reason to avoid his 
activities as a topic.

On 2022-10-28 15:32, Bill Ricker wrote:
>
>     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. )
Professionally, I've only done C and C++. I guess a little Objective-C. 
The Mac's switch to a proprietary graphics API was interesting in that 
they brought C++ to the GPU, but I didn't care for the proprietary 
nature (D3D was no better and the Linux driver team was centered at a 
distant office).
>
>     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>.)
In the long (long (long?)) term, hand coded C is temporary. It'll always 
be a compilation target, unless I find something that works better for 
me as an IL.
>
>     By Ubuntu forums, do you specifically mean those at
>     ubuntuforums.org <http://ubuntuforums.org>?
>
> I think that's the official place to discuss Ubuntu API coding as well 
> as use.
Thanks - I reset my "Ubuntu One" account from 6 years ago and it let me on.
>
>     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
The competitive model isn't a motivator for me; I suppose I just lose 
too often!
>
>     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 .
Discord is for people way cooler than me. I was on a non-technical 
Discord "site" (I think that's the right term) for a bit and there was a 
big focus on hot button social topics; I didn't have the right 
vocabulary to join the discussions.
>
>     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
>     <http://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

Interesting... My career intersected only with Perforce, which was so 
different but I'm learning a bit here and there as I go. The way git 
tracks changes (or doesn't as the case may be) is still hard to get my 
head around; I'm really just a basic solo-developer when it comes to git 
so far.

In summary, thanks everyone for the great feedback and advice!

My revised plan is:

(1) Keep my new project in the "personal toy" category until there's 
some evidence it might be useful or interesting.
(2) Work toward transitioning from consumer to contributor on projects 
I'm dependent on.
(3) GitHub is a good default location for any test cases I come up with, 
which is all I'll have to share anytime soon.

Again, thanks. Very useful feedback!

Hopefully face-to-face meetings will become an option again soon and 
I'll be able to thank you all in person,

Dan