Migration to GitHub

[Nikita Volkov]

Have you guys considered that? I believe this might draw a much more effective contribution to your projects.

Take me for example: instead of just posting a pull-request with the IdentifiedIxSet suggestion I had to awkwardly post a gist a find this mailing list to inform about it. Things could be done much more effectively.

[Jeremy Shaw]

You could have done a fork/pull request on hub.darcs.net as well.. Or
done a darcs record and attached the patch the mailing list..

In theory we should switch to github -- because everyone uses it. But,
switching to an inferior revision control system just because everyone
uses it is such a sad thing.

The only real reason to switch is if it was actually going to result
in more contributors. I am hoping that darcs-bridge is finally going
to stabilize enough to be useful so we could do a trial and see if it
really makes any difference with out having to commit to switching.

- jeremy

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[dag.od...@gmail.com]

I'm also hoping for Bridge, but I want to note that it probably won't bring many contributors unless we make it clear that we accept pull requests on github, and we process those quickly, and make it clear that we have a github presence on our websites and even in the Cabal source-repository definitions (I wonder if Cabal lets you have multiple source-repos for the same "kind" with different "type"?).

[thomas hartman]

For what it's worth, I'm patchtag dude (the other darcs hoster) and I agree that migrating to github would be a good idea for happstack.

Sometimes network effects are just too strong to ignore.

Not that I think it's time to throw in the towel on darcs, but it's important for happstack to get contributions as it matures, and I think switching would help.

Just my 2c.

[Chris Dornan]

I see what Jeremy is saying (though I am a very happy git user, the
Only RCS that I have really liked), but we aren't talking about a
Darcs/Git comparison but a comparison between Github and your
favourite Darcs hosting service (how could they possibly compete?)

I totally get the frustration of the Darcs folks having to deal
with the drip, drip of dubious and misinformed arguments on why
Git is better than Darcs though.

Chris

[dag.od...@gmail.com]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Chris Dornan <ch...@chrisdornan.com> wrote:

how could they possibly compete?

Well.

hub.darcs.net:

+ Fully open source

+ Written in Haskell

+ Get to use darcs

+ Will work with git seamlessly once bridge is sufficiently polished

+ No limit on repos

+ No limit on or cost for private repos

+ Just Works cherry picking right on the web (who needs pull requests and cumbersome feature branches?)

± Bug tracker mostly similar to GitHub's

- No wikis (though you can have markdown documents in the repo)

- No file editing on the web

- Don't get to use git right *now*

- Nothing even like pull requests; you have to talk to maintainer some other way

- No Travis or similar CI service "built in"

- Can't browse tree other than "HEAD"

I don't mean to say that everyone would be better served not using GitHub, but rather I want to say that the situation with darcs isn't nearly as bad as some people seem to think or make it out to be.  In particular, let me emphasize the point that the full tool chain with darcs, including the hosting services, is completely open source and written in Haskell.  In that regard, it's GitHub that can't possibly compete.

[dag.od...@gmail.com]

Well, OK; GitHub has a lot of little features that all add up to general polish (stats, language detection, github pages etc etc) but they're not really critical to the collaboration process. The social aspect to GitHub *is* useful to collaboration (pull requests, commit comments etc etc) but isn't critical either: IRC and mail lists work fine, and I often find I'm on IRC discussing a submission on GitHub with the maintainers anyway. A case could even be argued that GitHub scatters the discussion.

[Vincent Ambo]

I support the move to Github (as I mentioned before on IRC when clckwrks was announced).

2013/3/8 dag.od...@gmail.com <dag.od...@gmail.com>

[Nikita Volkov]

I'd like to draw in another opinion: I am one of those folks who have to work with other languages as well and I think I'm hardly alone in that. Considering Darcs as a VCS for any other language than Haskell is simply not an option, because other folks just won't get it. I don't think it needs any explanation about how I benefit from not having to use different VCSs and hosters for each project.

Concerning the opinions expressed about cons and pros, I think those were rather biased. From the user's perspective one can't really consider whether anything is written in any specific language to be a pro, as well as whether it is totally open source. Concerning the costs of non-limited GitHub features - those just don't apply to open source projects. The mentioned lack of anything close to pull-requests functionality on darcs.net on the other hand is far more important of a point for contribution process.

The ton of little features GitHub has may be considered as non-critical, but I most certainly can't say so about it's communication features - those are a total killer, and no IRC or mailing list experience can possibly compete with that in terms effectiveness. You discuss code in place it's stored with highlighting and stuff, you have this discussion attached forever to it and can always refer to it, you can edit and suggest your changes - stuff like that just shouldn't be underestimated.

Lastly I want to emphasize that in no way do I want to slam on Darcs, I'm certainly no expert in it to. Just clearing things out about GitHub user experience for open-source projects of which I've had enough.

2013/3/9 Vincent Ambo <taz...@gmail.com>

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[Chris Dornan]

I didn't mean at all to make a contentious point. It is well known that GitHub raised $10^9 to plough into a product that had already killed off most of the competition. That is really all I meant.

Every time I try to use the alternatives they seem cripplingly slow and have (by comparison) limited web interfaces (my latest experience was with a git-based product) — none of which is at all surprising.

Two of the most important things I look for in a code-hosting service are speed on the git interface and a comprehensive browsing/documentation/bug tracking/pulling service on the web interface--which must also be fast. If anyone had these things it would be difficult to give them up.

I suspect a good web-based code-browsing service might be surprisingly important to engaging new contributors.

Of course GitHub is not open source; in a world where Git and GitHub weren't so dominant I would much rather be using darcs, but that isn't the case.

Chris