git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[PJ Hyett]

> One nitpick regarding your git.git mirror: I doubt that people here
> ("the community") consider git-scm.com to be "the git homepage". I don't
> want to go into the reasons and start a pointless thread, but since
> git-scm.com is a fork of git.or.cz pointing to the latter (the root)
> should make everyone happy.

Hi Michael,
I'll go ahead and start a pointless thread along with the reasons
provided via answers to the 2008 Git Survey[1]:

43) What could be improved on the Git homepage(s)?

* Use git-scm.com instead of git.or.cz as the default homepage
* Learn from git-scm.com. Make it more newbie-friendly. More focus on
documentation
* Better graphical design/organization - new(?) git-scm.com looks better
* Look at git-scm.com :)
* Cleaner design, better organization (http://git-scm.com/ is a good start).
* Design - git-scm.com is superior compared to git.or.cz. Also the
first one is more user-friendly having exposed more important things
for users rather for experienced veterans who want to download most
current git release.
* I like what Scott Chacon has done with http://git-scm.com
* I prefer Scot Chacons rewrite, but mostly just it's look and feel.
The original site is perfectly functional; though it could do with
better documentation.
* git-scm.com
* git-scm.com is a great example of some light improvement. I do think
that the online man-page navigation is a little annoying, having to
revert to find in the browser to get to the right spot on the page. An
alternate alphabetical listing might help.
* Don't put everything on the first page, it is a little confusing.
Create categories, like download, documentation, About git and at
least a dedicated page for each of these categories. I think the
"design" could also be improved. I saw a proposition not long ago
aboutr a new git homepage on the mailing list: www.git-scm.com. I
think this site is easier to navigate and thus makes it easier to find
informations.
* I like the new git-scm site (with the blob committed to storing trees)
* Merge with Git-scm page?
* I like <http://www.git-scm.com> very much. I'd vote for it to be the
official Git homepage.
* git.or.cz?? I prefer http://git-scm.com/, it's better for beginners,
and the information is nicely presented (doc, tips, videos..).
* promote git-scm.com instead of git.or.cz
* See http://git-scm.com/
* I think git-scm.com is starting to get things right. Making
documentation readily available especially.
* Complete re-design by somebody actually the least bit proficient in
design? Oh wait, that's already been done at http://git-scm.com/.
* Rather ugly design. git-scm.com looks much better.
* I like Scott Chacon's site a lot and use it often: http://git-scm.com/
* Compare #1 and #2 1) http://git-scm.com 2) http://git.or.cz
* http://git.or.cz and http://git-scm.com should be merged
* http://git-scm.com/ is a worderfull project, making the homepage
look and feel much better and "user friendly". The source code is at
http://github.com/schacon/gitscm. What about using this as the Git
official homepage (not the domain, but the interface and images).
* git-scm.com should be the official page :)
* Organization and flow particularly for new users. I think Scott
Chacon's git-scm.com site does a much better job. Organization and
navigation of the content are the things that make it a winner.
* The www.git-scm.com homepage is great.
* Which one? http://git.or.cz/ or http://git-scm.com/ I tend to use
git-scm.com just because it looks nicer, is written in Rails and has
more user friendly information. Rather than browsing what feels like
"A manual online" that is git.or.cz
* I think the homepage (http://git-scm.com/) however work should be
done to have that come ahead of http://git.or.cz/ which currently tops
all the queries. I would try to strike a deal with that domain to
http-redirect to the new url. I can only imagine that this duplication
leads to confusion and a bad experience.
* It should look more like http://git-scm.com
* http://git-scm.com/ > git.or.cz -scm has all the info I might want
up front in one page, while my eyes gloss over just looking at or.cz.

Cheers,
PJ Hyett
http://github.com/pjhyett

1. http://www.survs.com/app/4/wo/IQ2m9AwQ2qFAVwuZrRLF4w/0.0.9.3.3.0.1.3.42.1.7.1

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Wincent Colaiuta]

El 15/10/2008, a las 12:18, PJ Hyett escribió:

>> One nitpick regarding your git.git mirror: I doubt that people here
>> ("the community") consider git-scm.com to be "the git homepage". I  
>> don't
>> want to go into the reasons and start a pointless thread, but since
>> git-scm.com is a fork of git.or.cz pointing to the latter (the root)
>> should make everyone happy.
>
> Hi Michael,
> I'll go ahead and start a pointless thread along with the reasons
> provided via answers to the 2008 Git Survey[1]:

Coming up in news at 6...

GitHub announces new maintainer for Git

GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer  
with the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom  
Preston and some select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world.  
You'll be able to track all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at  
GitHub. The former maintainer, Junio C Hamano, is being retired from  
service because the Git community (see git-scm.com) decided he wasn't  
as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson. For more information, see  
the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Scott Chacon]

Hi,

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:34 AM, Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> wrote:
> El 15/10/2008, a las 12:18, PJ Hyett escribió:
>
>>> One nitpick regarding your git.git mirror: I doubt that people here
>>> ("the community") consider git-scm.com to be "the git homepage". I don't
>>> want to go into the reasons and start a pointless thread, but since
>>> git-scm.com is a fork of git.or.cz pointing to the latter (the root)
>>> should make everyone happy.

There is a slight misperception here.  I setup the git mirror at
GitHub as part of my git-scm.com work, they did not do it as some sort
of semi-official mirror.  The reason the git.git repo points to
git-scm is because I had plans to use github apis to do some fun stuff
on git-scm, and the mirror is being kept up to date by scripts on the
git-scm server.  Also, I figured it was likely that people looking at
the git repo on GitHub rather than on kernel.org would probably be
more interested in the more user-friendly version, yes?  That's all,
it's nothing sinister. Petr and I have previously discussed trying to
unify the sites somehow and will likely discuss this in more detail at
the GitTogether in a few weeks.

Also, trust me - none of us want Junio's job.  I've talked way too
much with Shawn over the last few weeks to ever covet that position :)

I do wish that there wasn't this 'us vs them' mentality on this list,
though. I think GitHub is doing some good things for the community,
and I also think that 'the community' is bigger than this list.  I
propose that we spend our cycles on git stuff, rather than mocking or
trying to exclude each other.

Also, I think we can all agree that Junio is strikingly handsome.

Scott

>>
>> Hi Michael,
>> I'll go ahead and start a pointless thread along with the reasons
>> provided via answers to the 2008 Git Survey[1]:
>
> Coming up in news at 6...
>
> GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
>
> GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
> the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
> select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
> all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
> Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
> git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
> For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Petr Baudis]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 09:21:50AM -0700, Scott Chacon wrote:
> Petr and I have previously discussed trying to unify the sites somehow
> and will likely discuss this in more detail at the GitTogether in a
> few weeks.

Yes. I mentioned this on IRC but should really write it on the mailing
list - I'm looking forward for the GitTogether to resolve any remaining
issues anyone has with git-scm.com and make git.or.cz probably
essentially point to git-scm.com. Since the old threads died away long
ago, if anyone - especially who is not attending GitTogether - still
dislikes some things about the git-scm.com site, please follow up here.

> I do wish that there wasn't this 'us vs them' mentality on this list,
> though. I think GitHub is doing some good things for the community,
> and I also think that 'the community' is bigger than this list.

I think this last sentence is where we differ - for (most of?) us the
Git developers, 'the community' pretty much _is_ this list (with the IRC
channel as its casual extension). But I'm very glad to see an
announcement from the GitHub people here and I hope we will see more of
them. Don't worry about the occasional flames, we all get hit by them
sometime. :-) (Um, I personally think *I* get flamed much less than I
would deserve. ;-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
People who take cold baths never have rheumatism, but they have
cold baths.

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[PJ Hyett]

> Coming up in news at 6...
>
> GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
>
> GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
> the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
> select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
> all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
> Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
> git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
> For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).

In case there was any confusion, this is why we almost never bother
posting to the list, because no matter what the topic, it always turns
into why the git community hates GitHub.

I really don't understand the disdain for a company that's made git
accessible to a much wider audience in less than a year. I kinda
thought we'd all be on the same team.

For the record, Scott wasn't a GitHub employee when he wrote
git-scm.com, nor was he paid to produce it. Turns out people don't
always have ulterior motives, he just wanted to make a better git
homepage.


-PJ

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Jonathan del Strother]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 7:36 PM, PJ Hyett <pjhyett@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Coming up in news at 6...
>>
>> GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
>>
>> GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
>> the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
>> select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
>> all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
>> Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
>> git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
>> For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).
>
> In case there was any confusion, this is why we almost never bother
> posting to the list, because no matter what the topic, it always turns
> into why the git community hates GitHub.

Really?  I thought it was usually just about how Wincent hates GitHub.


FWIW, I think github is pretty good, and git-scm.com is great.

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Jakub Narebski]

"PJ Hyett" <pjhyett@gmail.com> writes:

[> Wincent Colaiuta wrote:]
The above attribution was missing, BTW...

> > Coming up in news at 6...
> >
> > GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
> >
> > GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
> > the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
> > select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
> > all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
> > Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
> > git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
> > For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).
> 
> In case there was any confusion, this is why we almost never bother
> posting to the list, because no matter what the topic, it always turns
> into why the git community hates GitHub.

Errr... for me it looks like somebodys irony detection is not working...
On the other hand it is why Scott E Fahlman invented emoticons :-)

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git

Re: git-scm.com

[Teemu Likonen]

PJ Hyett [2008-10-15 11:36 -0700]:

> For the record, Scott wasn't a GitHub employee when he wrote
> git-scm.com, nor was he paid to produce it. Turns out people don't
> always have ulterior motives, he just wanted to make a better git
> homepage.

I'm not sure what community I'm part of but I think git-scm.com is much
better homepage. I also think that the new user book[1] is better than
the one in kernel.org. So thanks for contributing to git users.

-------------
1. http://book.git-scm.com/

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Garry Dolley]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:36:10AM -0700, PJ Hyett wrote:
> > Coming up in news at 6...
> >
> > GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
> >
> > GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
> > the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
> > select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
> > all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
> > Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
> > git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
> > For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).
> 
> In case there was any confusion, this is why we almost never bother
> posting to the list, because no matter what the topic, it always turns
> into why the git community hates GitHub.

For the record, I'm a part of the git community and I like GitHub
quite a bit. :)

-- 
Garry Dolley
ARP Networks, Inc.
http://scie.nti.st
Los Angeles County REACT, Unit 336
WQGK336

Re: git-scm.com (was Re: Git graph on GitHub)

[Aaron Cohen]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Garry Dolley <gdolley@arpnetworks.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:36:10AM -0700, PJ Hyett wrote:
>> > Coming up in news at 6...
>> >
>> > GitHub announces new maintainer for Git
>> >
>> > GitHub is proud to announce the replacement of the old Git maintainer with
>> > the "Git Core Team", comprising PJ Hyett, Scott Chacon, Tom Preston and some
>> > select personalities from the Ruby on Rails world. You'll be able to track
>> > all the latest updates to "Git Edge" over at GitHub. The former maintainer,
>> > Junio C Hamano, is being retired from service because the Git community (see
>> > git-scm.com) decided he wasn't as good-looking as David Heinemeier Hanson.
>> > For more information, see the official Git book (book.git-scm.com).
>>
>> In case there was any confusion, this is why we almost never bother
>> posting to the list, because no matter what the topic, it always turns
>> into why the git community hates GitHub.
>
> For the record, I'm a part of the git community and I like GitHub
> quite a bit. :)
>

For the record, I'm not part of either community and find things to
dislike about both of them.

git.or.cz: I personally prefer its plain style, but it has way too
much information on the front page (why is so much download
information on that page rather than hidden behind the "download" link
that currently just goes to an ftp directory?)

git-scm.com: Much better organized, but suffers from web 2.0
shininess.  Also, every time I look at it my eyes have to read
EVERYTHING to figure out what ANYTHING is.  For instance, why is there
that random column of "projects using git" that seems to only exist to
distract me from the important stuff?

Re: git-scm.com

[Nanako Shiraishi]

Quoting Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 09:21:50AM -0700, Scott Chacon wrote:
>> I do wish that there wasn't this 'us vs them' mentality on this list,
>> though. I think GitHub is doing some good things for the community,
>> and I also think that 'the community' is bigger than this list.
>
> I think this last sentence is where we differ - for (most of?) us the
> Git developers, 'the community' pretty much _is_ this list (with the IRC
> channel as its casual extension).

Curiously, whenever somebody says "git-scm.com is the official git homepage", you are not involved in the discussion.  Could you share your position on this issue with the rest of the "community"?

-- 
Nanako Shiraishi
http://ivory.ap.teacup.com/nanako3/

Re: git-scm.com

[Petr Baudis]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 06:42:39PM +0900, Nanako Shiraishi wrote:
> Quoting Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>:
> > On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 09:21:50AM -0700, Scott Chacon wrote:
> >> I do wish that there wasn't this 'us vs them' mentality on this list,
> >> though. I think GitHub is doing some good things for the community,
> >> and I also think that 'the community' is bigger than this list.
> >
> > I think this last sentence is where we differ - for (most of?) us the
> > Git developers, 'the community' pretty much _is_ this list (with the IRC
> > channel as its casual extension).
> 
> Curiously, whenever somebody says "git-scm.com is the official git homepage", you are not involved in the discussion.  Could you share your position on this issue with the rest of the "community"?

  To possibly save Junio some archives digging, he did share his
position in the original thread at

	http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/90079/focus=90167

				Petr "Pasky" Baudis

Re: git-scm.com

[Junio C Hamano]

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

> Quoting Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>:
>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 09:21:50AM -0700, Scott Chacon wrote:
>>> I do wish that there wasn't this 'us vs them' mentality on this list,
>>> though. I think GitHub is doing some good things for the community,
>>> and I also think that 'the community' is bigger than this list.
>>
>> I think this last sentence is where we differ - for (most of?) us the
>> Git developers, 'the community' pretty much _is_ this list (with the IRC
>> channel as its casual extension).
>
> Curiously, whenever somebody says "git-scm.com is the official git
> homepage", you are not involved in the discussion.  Could you share your
> position on this issue with the rest of the "community"?

The thing is, I do not think whatever I say would be any more official
than what Pasky says when it comes to "the git homepage", even though I
might be a fairly central person in the developer community.

I first have to say that in this era of the Internet and distributed
development, "official" status means much less than what everybody seems
to think [*1*].  It is perfectly fine for people to decide which site they
would want to go for git related information for themselves, and direct
their friends to.

In other words, I do not care either way very much, personally.

The "official" maintainer of git was Shawn for a short while last year in
October, after he claimed to act as one during my absense, and everybody
accepted it not because I named him but he had the necessary respect and
trust from the developers.  I asked him to be the maintainer again this
year during early October, and again it worked quite well.  I imagine it
would have worked if it were not Shawn but any other people among the few
people I trust on this list.  I don't have to name them but you know who
you are, and more importantly, people in the developer community know who
you are.  That is what respect and trust are about.

It wouldn't have worked well if the self-claimed interim maintainer were
just some random Joe, and it wouldn't have worked well either, even if I
endorsed him, if the random Joe did not have enough respect and trust from
the community.

Pasky's site came first from very early in git's life, people contributed
contents to it over time, and he kept the site up-to-date, and through all
that effort, Pasky earned (at least my) respect and trust that the site
will keep serving the git users and developers well as it has been in the
past.  For this reason, to me personally, the "official homepage" has
always been git.or.cz, and will continue to be so, until Pasky says he
considers Scott and his pages earned enough respect and trust _from him_,
and wants to redirect git.or.cz traffic to git-scm.com [*2*].

Regarding "the community", I think what Pasky said in the quoted message
is right in that the word, used in a message on _this_ mailing list,
refers to "the developer community", whose definition I 100% agree with
what he said.

I sense that people around GitHub come from a different world --- it may
also be a legitimate "git community" (perhaps a "users and evangelists
community", which is not a bad thing in itself), but certainly it is
different from the git developer community as I know it.

I think "us vs them" mentality is unavoidable to a certain degree.  More
importantly, I should also point out that it goes both ways.  I think the
"fork once and part forever" attitude of git-scm.com from the very
beginning stems from the very same "us vs them" mentality.  The developer
community ("them" for Scott, "us" for me and Pasky) has been (and will
always be) text oriented, because we tend to try shooting for the greatest
common denominator.  The end-user community in this Web 2.0 era ("us" for
Scott, "them" for me and Pasky) on the other hand, would want to be
entertained by singing and dancing contents.  The two communities serve
different purposes and consist of different audiences.

Very early on, Scott made his intention clear that git-scm.com once copies
from git.or.cz, forks and is very unlikely to merge back because of this
vast difference of the target audience.  That's "us vs them" mentality
right there, but I do not think this division was particularly a bad thing
at all.  It led to what git-scm.com site has in addition to what it copied
from git.or.cz; git-scm.com has made git more approachable by the kinds of
end users who were repelled by the spartan git.or.cz's contents and
organization.  It was a good thing.

So let's help both sites improve support for git users _and_ developers,
and watch git-scm.com continue earning our respect and trust.  It is my
understanding that Pasky is hoping that it can turn into a good site that
supports not just end users but developers well, so that he can start
redirecting repo.or.cz traffic to it, and I am hoping the same.

And let's do so without flaming anybody ;-).


[Footnote]

*1* While I was researching to write this message, I was kind of surprised
to find that the Wikipedia article on git went through a few rounds of
flipping between pointing at git.or.cz and git-scm.com.  I didn't study
the page history deeply enough to see who did what change, but I doubt any
of the people who are doing real work on either site are stupid enough to
have got involved in the self promotion nonsense.  I trust Pasky that much
(and much more), and also I came to trust Scott at least that much, after
seeing git-scm.com adding useful contents over the past few months
(admittedly the rate of the improvement may have slowed down somewhat
recently, compared to its initial bulk import from git.or.cz).

*2* There is no point in duplicated effort when the goals of two sites are
compatible and when there is such trust between two parties.  I do not yet
know if the goals are compatible, though.  We'll see.