SGI: Development

Just in case no one noticed, git is shit, github is a large bowl of worthless vomit, and Leenus is a braindead dork.

What a huge pile of hippopotamus crap

i do agree tho, git is clumsy and has some major disadvantages. i guess without the linus bonus it wouldn't have gotten far

All version-control software is shit. It's all just a series of convoluted ploys for different nerd factions to claim useful projects as part of their little software fiefdom without having to formally annex them. You can tell because they always make you download and install their terrible client software in order to get at anything, or else dig down into whatever obscure little corner of the site they may possibly have hidden their "download a snapshot" functionality (and the snapshot never, ever compiles into a working program.)

commodorejohn wrote: All version-control software is shit.

Could be, but I've used svn and cvs before, they were kinda clunky but at least they worked.

This git thing is absolutely useless. Plus so far, out of three pieces of software I've gitted, not a single one actually built. Not even MIPSPro, Sun Studio.

"This way to the vomitorium, please ..."

For what you are colloquially referring to as IRIX, is, actually, GNU/IRIX ; or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU + IRIX.

surrealdeal wrote: For what you are colloquially referring to as IRIX, is, actually, GNU/IRIX ; or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU + IRIX.

This is in Solaris, actually, but I take your point. The FOSS stuff is like a hot girl you meet in the bar who asks, "Wanta come over to my house and we can play ?

Then when you get there, three thugs hit you in the back of the head with a brick and take all your money.

I should know better by now

You forgot the part where she's actually a man.

Come on hamei. Give us some meat on the bone, why does it suck?

Having worked on several fairly large scale commercial development projects I can only say that in my humble opinion it is absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent impossible to do so without a version control system. Back in the dark ages when we did all our development on SGIs we used CVS, now we use Clear Case. The main advantage to git over CVS is that it is much faster at merging large changesets. I don't know much about Mercurial or Subversion but I've always assumed they're basically the result of "not invented here" syndrome...

vishnu wrote: Having worked on several fairly large scale commercial development projects I can only say that in my humble opinion it is absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent impossible to do so without a version control system. Back in the dark ages when we did all our development on SGIs we used CVS, now we use Clear Case. The main advantage to git over CVS is that it is much faster at merging large changesets. I don't know much about Mercurial or Subversion but I've always assumed they're basically the result of "not invented here" syndrome...

I'm still using SVN daily at work, though slowly moving towards TFS with Git for all new developments. Branching was always my sole annoyance in SVN, everything else works fine in my opinion.

I tend towards hg, but mostly because I'm used to it from all the Mozilla work, so I suppose it's more Stockholm syndrome than anything else.

I use git and fossil, I like them both equally and I prefer both over CVS/SVN. Do I think they are necessarily super good? No, not at all. The main reason I have and use git is to contribute to projects using it. Fossil I use because its the only one that's permissively licensed and does what I need.

Pontus wrote: Come on hamei. Give us some meat on the bone, why does it suck?

You're right, it's not just git. The git thing is more of an indicator, like gcc hardcoded into the Makefiles. It's getting to be like going to a bar in North Beach - when that girl with big boobies grabs your crotch but she has an Adam's apple, better demand to see baby pictures.

What precipitated this observation was I just tried three gits from Slowaris. I don't think we even have it in nekoware, do we ? I'd look but want to avoid getting sucked down that bowl of sewage.

The git thing seems to be following the path blazed by hardcoded gcc, by package managers, by chasing the tail of flashy crap projects, e.g. gtk2 / gtk3. It's all tending in the direction of force-fed commoditized low-quality garbage, the exact thing that Loonix originally set out to avoid.

My git example : grabbed a git, or gitted a grab, whatever. < cat README > -- bla bla about the wonderful developers, thanks so much, etc etc. <cat INSTAll> -- a really long description of ./configure options.

Okay kewlo, do < ./configure --help >. Umm, file not found ? wtf ? <ls > , yup, no configure. Oh christ, nice q/c there, guys. Okay, let me rack the old meat RAM, umm, < autoconf >, yes ?

So I got a configure script but it didn't work. Sooprize sooprize.

Well, there's a mailing list. Joined. Gave them a short blast of dragon's breath. Who cares, the software is trash anyhow, at least I can vent. As you would expect, 40,000 whines and snivels about how it's open sores, if I'm so smart I can fix it, if I were truly hip to the jive I'd already know that you have to do < auto re conf -i > to get a configure script, if I am not versed in the secret handshake then I don't deserve to use our glorious software, &c &c ad infinitem glory glory hallelujah.

I replied, "Oh yeah ? Show me where the info is in your README or INSTALL docs, you mentally-retarded chimpanzees ?" to which of course they had no answer because the info needed to compile their crap software is not anywhere to be found.

In short, it's shit, Pontus. In plainest of terms, the stinky stuff that comes out the ass of an orang-outang with dysentery.

Yes, I am sure there are a few 'projects' using git that aren't like that. But in my testing, 3 out of 3 were a worthless waste of time and effort. This seems to be the direction that Free ! Open Source ! software is headed.


The silver lining : disgust with this shit caused me to rethink Communigate. Five minutes to find them, seven minutes to read the info and find the download (still works on OS/2, Irix, probably Plan 9. Nobody 'deprecated' over there.) Five minutes to download, another five to follow the instructions and mirabile dictu, in under an hour I had an smtp-imap-pop mail server running. And I didn't have to add user accounts to the operating system to get mail accounts ! Imagine that ! And the instructions .. the software actually DID what the readme's said ! Holy shit, I died and done went to heaven, Martha.

I still have this mental illness where I think that open source, where you should be able to match the software to your own circumstances, is a great idea. But this is a mental illness because that's not reality. The reality of open sores now is, it's just as non-responsive to users as commercial software ever was, except it has the added bonus of being lower quality. The worst of both worlds, hooray !

I thought that removing fiscal restraints would lead to higher quality. No commercial outfit is going to spend six hours removing some tiny little glitch, while a person who was proud of his work could happily spend six weeks of hobby time hunting down bugs. But this was not realistic. These people have no pride. Removing the fear of being thrown out in the street also removed the incentive listen to users. It went from "the source is available so anyone can improve it and nobody can take it away after you are dependent on it" to "the source is available so if you want it to work, you'll have to fix it yourself and we don't really give a damn if it's garbage or not."

Not good.

You are correct, Pontus. It isn't just git. It's the entire Open Sores ecosystem. The majority of it has leprosy. And malaria. And Down's Syndrome. And scabies. And measles. Five years ago it was okay, if not perfect. But now, if you want to avoid catching some loathsome disease, better run far and run fast.

A funny footnote : came across this survey

http://acomp.stanford.edu/surveys/2009_ ... ergraduate

some interesting things ... roughly 50% use Windows, 50% Apple, 5% yes that's five per cent, use Linux. Since the numbers add up to more than 100%, my guess is we're talking dual-boot. So that Linux figure is probably even smaller than 5%. And this ain't Frostbite Falls Community College.

Maybe the kids of today are smarter than I thought. Smarter than me, that's for sure.

hmmm, slight addition:

8% run more than one operating system on the same machine
50% have a Windows PC desktop or laptop
58% have a Mac desktop or laptop
5% have a Unix or Linux computer

Curious how many of those 8% are virtual machine vs. dual-boot or boot camp ?

But this survey is also from 5 years ago... when I was still a student.

guardian452 wrote: hmmm, slight addition:

50% have a Windows PC desktop or laptop
58% have a Mac desktop or laptop
5% have a Unix or Linux computer

Curious how many of those 8% are virtual machine vs. dual-boot or boot camp ?

But this survey is also from 5 years ago... when I was still a student.

Ja, it's a Big Picture of the forest from a distance, for sure. But no matter what, the number of Stanford students using Linux is tiny. That's kind of a shock, especially when you consider the history of Stanford.

And I don't think it's getting better, guard. My guess would be, that number is even smaller today. Linux 'on the desktop' seems to have imploded. It offers nothing except hassle.

Maybe the incentive for open sores has dried up ? I went there because I got shafted by software companies several times. But the software land rush is over, you can get pretty much anything you want for cheap or free now, Linux never turned into a quality alternative, why bother with it ?

Surprising survey, eh ?

hamei wrote: Five years ago it was okay, if not perfect

it always sucked
but indeed i have to agree it got even worse. i even stopped filing bug reports or sending patches because ... some of the popular reasons:
- they mark it as fixed although it's not
- they don't see why it's a bug
- they just don't care at all

I work with both mercurial and git, they're almost the same from user perspective, for eg. I miss something like git stash on hg, for those nice moments when you screw all things up, and reseting to head would make them even worse.

guardian452 wrote: hmmm, slight addition:

8% run more than one operating system on the same machine
50% have a Windows PC desktop or laptop
58% have a Mac desktop or laptop
5% have a Unix or Linux computer

Curious how many of those 8% are virtual machine vs. dual-boot or boot camp ?

That survey tells us a lot less than it appears to, since it doesn't give a breakdown by major. I'd guess that nearly all *nix users are Engineering or CS majors, and that most humanities majors are on Macs. So it probably hasn't changed from the height of the Linux fanboy epidemic.

I started with Linux to get away from Windows 98. Many years later, I hate going back to Windows because I lose the advantage of hard-gained experience in Unixy tools and methods. Yet I spend half my time on Windows machines. I used to (mildly) proselytize for Linux, but I just realized it has been years since I recommended it to anyone. If I were a student today, I would investigate Linux (and all the free *nixes), but I'm pretty sure I'd make an informed decision to stick with Windows.

The only problem with that is that Microsoft keeps kneecapping Windows by gradually eroding its advantages (backwards compatibility and a broad slate of compatible software and simple no-nonsense UI) while try to chase the success that's so consistently eluding them in the tablet market. Windows 8 is damn near unusable until you employ third-party hacks to make it less retarded, and even Windows 7 did stupid shit like bring that goddamn Office 2007 Playskool-activity-center bar into Explorer and remove a lot of the options for making it behave like older versions. Windows 10 doesn't look to be seriously reversing the trend, either.

I keep going back and forth on the free Unices (love the concept, hate the way 90% of developers don't give two shits for good UI, and Linux/the major desktop environments in particular seems to have gotten so invested in the idea of taking over for Windows that they've started copying everything it's doing wrong to boot,) but the one thing that continues to make me want to make it work as a daily driver is the prospect of being able to just set myself up with a single software environment and then never have to put up with stupid UI changes again.

commodorejohn wrote: The only problem with that is that Microsoft keeps kneecapping Windows by gradually eroding its advantages

Heh, heh. Still using WinXP when I can.

...prospect of being able to just set myself up with a single software environment and then never have to put up with stupid UI changes again.

I've finally accepted that's never going to happen. Even if I make a comfortable setup in NetBSD or OS/2, it's like living on a desert island when practically everyone I might want to exchange software with is on Windows. I've basically resigned myself to using software whose design is repulsive but objectively allows me to get more work done. Is that wisdom or the defeatism of old age?

Still, when I think about coding my projects just for Windows, I become really, really sad.