mac osx

mac osx

[tom smitts]

Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
 a clue which git install package to download?  You 
put some arcane chipset designation in the package
 name!  Why make mac installers at all?  Mac users 
know their operating system number, e.g. 10.6.7, 
and that's all.  I doubt Windows users know any better.  
And I doubt you can find anywhere on a mac that says
 i386 or whatever the heck the other dumb 
designation is.

Re: mac osx

[Graham Christensen]

Many people who are using Apple computers choose to use Macports or Homebrew to install their packages, which makes this a moot point. Additionally, XCode 4 provides Git as well.

One thing to consider is that people who truly don't understand what kind of machine they are on, and are incapable of figuring out how to do so, are going to have an extremely difficult time using it.

That isn't to say it shouldn't be addressed, Bazaar, and Mercurial both seem to provide an easy installation medium.

-- 
Graham Christensen

Re: mac osx

[Junio C Hamano]

tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> writes:

> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
> a clue which git install package to download?

Not a clue.

> You put some arcane chipset designation in the package
> name!  Why make mac installers at all?

No, I don't, I do not make mac installers.

Unfortunately I do not know which one of "Git maintainers" make installers
for Macintosh. Hopefully the guilty-party would respond, or perhaps the
person who make installers do not live on this list, in which case the
complaint needs to be redirected to the person and off of this mailing
list.

Thanks.

Re: mac osx

[Kyle Neath]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>  name!  Why make mac installers at all?  Mac users
> know their operating system number, e.g. 10.6.7,
> and that's all.  I doubt Windows users know any better.
> And I doubt you can find anywhere on a mac that says
>  i386 or whatever the heck the other dumb
> designation is.

Yikes! That's definitely not good. I'll see what we can do about updating
git-scm.com to point to a more reasonable installer for OSX. I haven't clicked
that link in a long time and had no idea it was so confusing.

I've created an issue so we can track it, if you'd like to follow along:
https://github.com/schacon/gitscm/issues/16

Kyle Neath
Director of Design, GitHub

Re: mac osx

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

[+timcharper, owner of the git-osx-installer project]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 05:40, Kyle Neath <kneath@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
>> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
>> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>>  name!  Why make mac installers at all?  Mac users
>> know their operating system number, e.g. 10.6.7,
>> and that's all.  I doubt Windows users know any better.
>> And I doubt you can find anywhere on a mac that says
>>  i386 or whatever the heck the other dumb
>> designation is.
>
> Yikes! That's definitely not good. I'll see what we can do about updating
> git-scm.com to point to a more reasonable installer for OSX. I haven't clicked
> that link in a long time and had no idea it was so confusing.
>
> I've created an issue so we can track it, if you'd like to follow along:
> https://github.com/schacon/gitscm/issues/16
>
> Kyle Neath
> Director of Design, GitHub




-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: mac osx

[Timothy Harper]

On Sep 21, 2011, at 04:34, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

> Heya,
> 
> [+timcharper, owner of the git-osx-installer project]
> 
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 05:40, Kyle Neath <kneath@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
>>> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>>>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
>>> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>>>  name!

Good point, I'll update the description to include "32-bit" and "64-bit"

>>>  Why make mac installers at all?

Why, to install git on the mac, of course. Previous to Xcode 4.0, it wasn't included. It still has value for those that want git on their machine but haven't downloaded and installed the 4gb Xcode package.

>>>  Mac users
>>> know their operating system number, e.g. 10.6.7,
>>> and that's all.

I am a mac user. I know much more than the operating system number.

>>>  I doubt Windows users know any better.

Fair enough.

>>> And I doubt you can find anywhere on a mac that says
>>>  i386 or whatever the heck the other dumb
>>> designation is.

Sure you can. For example:

timcharper@timtheenchanter:~/Desktop $ file /bin/bash 
/bin/bash: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/bin/bash (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/bin/bash (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386


That "dumb designation" is the march (machine architecture). It's a standard to label packages that way in the unix packaging world. I suppose many of us have just grown up knowing that from our experience compiling software.

Based on the way you've approached your complaining, I get the impression you aren't one of those linux users. Perhaps take a deep breath and take some valium for more tact next time? We're volunteers here. I'm trying to make your life better, not more miserable than it already is.

>> 
>> Yikes! That's definitely not good. I'll see what we can do about updating
>> git-scm.com to point to a more reasonable installer for OSX. I haven't clicked
>> that link in a long time and had no idea it was so confusing.
>> 
>> I've created an issue so we can track it, if you'd like to follow along:
>> https://github.com/schacon/gitscm/issues/16
>> 
>> Kyle Neath
>> Director of Design, GitHub

Kyle, I'll put 32-bit and 64-bit in the description. Somebody mentioned linking to the featured download list as well in that issue, that's a good recommendation.

> -- 
> Cheers,
> 
> Sverre Rabbelier

Cheers! Be happy! Go pet a puppy!

Tim

Re: mac osx

[Scott Chacon]

Hey,

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 5:52 AM, Timothy Harper <timcharper@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
>>>> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>>>>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
>>>> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>>>>  name!
>
> Good point, I'll update the description to include "32-bit" and "64-bit"

Honestly this doesn't help much.  I think the point is that these
numbers or machs are not in any of the docs or ads I can think of for
macs.  I feel pretty stupid admitting this to this list, but I
honestly don't know which macs are 32 bit - I assume the MBP is 64,
but if someone challenged me I'm not sure I could really defend it.

Not that I'm the smartest guy in the world, but I have been using *NIX
for a long damn time - it's just that Apple doesn't really use that as
much of a selling point - it's not like the old days when nerds like
us would buy the CPU at the store and it said "64-bit" on it - you buy
a mac, maybe you know it's a Core Duo or i5/i7 but how are you
supposed to know that means 64-bit?  I suppose a real geek would, and
maybe I've fallen out of that category somehow, but honestly chipset
has been so unimportant these days when compared to disk type and
speed (SSD, etc), memory size, etc - I just don't follow the
incremental improvements anymore.

Even I don't really keep up with the chipset specs to know - I can't
imagine anyone using the dmg installer instead of brew would have the
slightest idea what 64-bit even means.  And in our defense, the march
is nowhere on this entire tech spec page for a MBP:

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html

So maybe you care enough to see that the chipset is an i7, so you
google it and end up on the intel i7 page:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-i7-processor.html

Nope, no march there either.  I had to specifically find the wikipedia
page for the processor which lists it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core#Core_i7

And 3/4 of the way down a huge page and only as a passing reference.

The point being - almost nobody that clicks on the DMG link from the
git-scm website is going to know what bit architecture they're running
on.


> Kyle, I'll put 32-bit and 64-bit in the description. Somebody mentioned linking to the featured download list as well in that issue, that's a good recommendation.
>

I link to the featured downloads from git-scm.com front page as the
huge mac icon - I assume that's where most people land when they're
looking for a mac installer. And on that page you have "Leopard" and
"Snow Leopard" on each download, which is WAY more common for people
to know.  What I should probably do is have a dropdown thingy on
git-scm that asks you what kind of mac you have and what OS you are
running (whatever I can't get from the browser info) and just
auto-download the right one so they never have to see the google
downloads page.  That would, however, take Google having an api or me
scraping that page, which I'll have to look into.

Scott

Re: mac osx

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 16:58, Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com> wrote:
> I link to the featured downloads from git-scm.com front page as the
> huge mac icon

You currently link to:

http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/list?can=3

Which apparently shows all downloads that were at some point featured.

If you link instead to:

http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/list?q=label:Featured

The list is a lot shorter.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: mac osx

[Stephen Bash]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Scott Chacon" <schacon@gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:58:03 AM
> Subject: Re: mac osx
> 
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 5:52 AM, Timothy Harper <timcharper@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
> >>>>  a clue which git install package to download? You
> >>>> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
> >>>>  name!
> >
> > Good point, I'll update the description to include "32-bit" and
> > "64-bit"
> 
> Honestly this doesn't help much. I think the point is that these
> numbers or machs are not in any of the docs or ads I can think of for
> macs. I feel pretty stupid admitting this to this list, but I
> honestly don't know which macs are 32 bit - I assume the MBP is 64,
> but if someone challenged me I'm not sure I could really defend it.

Perhaps I can shed some light on the subject...  (Long time Mac user and developer of software that has to deal with these sorts of issues all the time)

Starting with the hardware: Apple announced the switch to Intel processors in 2005, with the first machines shipping in early 2006 with the Intel Core Duo (i386/32-bit) processors.  In August of 2006 they introduced a Xeon-based Mac Pro that used the x86_64/64-bit instruction set.  According to Wikipedia [1] by August of 2007 every Mac shipped was based on an x86_64 chip.

Now Apple confused things with the software: Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) introduced the ability to run 64-bit applications (and access more the 4GB of memory), but the kernel was still 32-bit (I've skimmed some articles about how they did this, but I don't remember the details now).  According to this article [2] it wasn't until OS 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard) that Apple actually made the boot default to the 64-bit kernel (but I have first hand experience with commercial software that changes the default back to 32-bit!).

And during all this users were never educated about the difference because many (most?) applications built for Mac ship "universal binaries" with multiple architectures linked into the same file (though there are still a lot that just ship 32-bit).  I don't know how much effort it would be to update the Git Makefile for universal builds on Macs (sometimes it's as easy as "-arch i386 -arch x86_64"), but that might be the most "Mac-like" way to go.

For the geeks in the audience if you really want to know:
  a) the instruction sets linked in a binary (executable or shared library): 
        $ file /path/to/binary/of/interest
  b) the currently booted kernel architecture: 
        $ uname -m
  c) the currently running architecture set of any application: 
        Activity Monitor lists in the column "kind": PowerPC, Intel, or Intel (64-bit)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_transition
[2] http://macperformanceguide.com/SnowLeopard-64bit.html

HTH,
Stephen

Re: mac osx

[Timothy Harper]

On Sep 21, 2011, at 09:58, Scott Chacon wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 5:52 AM, Timothy Harper <timcharper@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:40 PM, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>>>>>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
>>>>> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>>>>>  name!
>> 
>> Good point, I'll update the description to include "32-bit" and "64-bit"
> 
> Honestly this doesn't help much.  I think the point is that these
> numbers or machs are not in any of the docs or ads I can think of for
> macs.  I feel pretty stupid admitting this to this list, but I
> honestly don't know which macs are 32 bit - I assume the MBP is 64,
> but if someone challenged me I'm not sure I could really defend it.

At one point, I had a universal binary release (both 32 and 64 bit instructions compiled). The trouble with it was it increased the file size by an additional 3-4 MB (going off memory). So I decided to only release 32 bit versions since they run everywhere, and only a very small fraction of people would care about 64 bit. Later, I had some requests for 64 bit, so I decided to do two separate builds, satisfying those who care about 64 bit while keeping the download size smaller. In almost a year of doing things this way, this is the first complaint I had about it.

> 
> Not that I'm the smartest guy in the world, but I have been using *NIX
> for a long damn time - it's just that Apple doesn't really use that as
> much of a selling point - it's not like the old days when nerds like
> us would buy the CPU at the store and it said "64-bit" on it - you buy
> a mac, maybe you know it's a Core Duo or i5/i7 but how are you
> supposed to know that means 64-bit?  I suppose a real geek would, and
> maybe I've fallen out of that category somehow, but honestly chipset
> has been so unimportant these days when compared to disk type and
> speed (SSD, etc), memory size, etc - I just don't follow the
> incremental improvements anymore.
> 
> Even I don't really keep up with the chipset specs to know - I can't
> imagine anyone using the dmg installer instead of brew would have the
> slightest idea what 64-bit even means.  And in our defense, the march
> is nowhere on this entire tech spec page for a MBP:
> 
> http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html
> 
> So maybe you care enough to see that the chipset is an i7, so you
> google it and end up on the intel i7 page:
> 
> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/core-i7-processor.html
> 
> Nope, no march there either.  I had to specifically find the wikipedia
> page for the processor which lists it:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core#Core_i7
> 
> And 3/4 of the way down a huge page and only as a passing reference.
> 
> The point being - almost nobody that clicks on the DMG link from the
> git-scm website is going to know what bit architecture they're running
> on.

I'm willing to concede your point.

>> Kyle, I'll put 32-bit and 64-bit in the description. Somebody mentioned linking to the featured download list as well in that issue, that's a good recommendation.
> 
> I link to the featured downloads from git-scm.com front page as the
> huge mac icon - I assume that's where most people land when they're
> looking for a mac installer. And on that page you have "Leopard" and
> "Snow Leopard" on each download, which is WAY more common for people
> to know.  What I should probably do is have a dropdown thingy on
> git-scm that asks you what kind of mac you have and what OS you are
> running (whatever I can't get from the browser info) and just
> auto-download the right one so they never have to see the google
> downloads page.  That would, however, take Google having an api or me
> scraping that page, which I'll have to look into.

Ever since installing OS X Lion and Xcode 4.1 it seems I have lost the ability to build targeting Leopard (see /Developer/SDKs/), and haven't looked in to a work around. I have only built packages targeting the Snow Leopard.

I see two possible resolutions:

A) Tag builds as 32-bit and 64-bit. At git-scm.com (and github), link to the list that only shows 32-bit builds. For 99.9% (pulled-out-of-butt) of people using the installer, this will be just fine. For people who care about 64 bit, if they are motivated they can build own or find it.

B) Switch to universal architecture and cause everyone to suffer an addition 30% or so wait while downloading the installer.

What do y'all vote for?

Tim

Re: mac osx

[Scott Chacon]

Hey,

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Timothy Harper <timcharper@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ever since installing OS X Lion and Xcode 4.1 it seems I have lost the ability to build targeting Leopard (see /Developer/SDKs/), and haven't looked in to a work around. I have only built packages targeting the Snow Leopard.
>
> I see two possible resolutions:
>
> A) Tag builds as 32-bit and 64-bit. At git-scm.com (and github), link to the list that only shows 32-bit builds. For 99.9% (pulled-out-of-butt) of people using the installer, this will be just fine. For people who care about 64 bit, if they are motivated they can build own or find it.
>
> B) Switch to universal architecture and cause everyone to suffer an addition 30% or so wait while downloading the installer.
>
> What do y'all vote for?

I vote for Universal builds.  I don't think anyone downloading a DMG
will care between 6M and 9M - it's still smaller than most YouTube
videos.  Then I can just have people choose their OS version and
auto-download whatever the latest build is.

Also, fwiw, though this is the first you may have heard about it, I've
personally had probably 5 or 6 people approach me at conferences and
trainings and complain about it - or email me as the maintainer of the
git-scm page to complain.  I probably should have brought it up
sooner, but I've just been so happy you've been doing the builds at
all, I didn't want to complain :)

Scott

Re: mac osx

[Timothy Harper]

On Sep 21, 2011, at 12:01, Scott Chacon wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Timothy Harper <timcharper@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ever since installing OS X Lion and Xcode 4.1 it seems I have lost the ability to build targeting Leopard (see /Developer/SDKs/), and haven't looked in to a work around. I have only built packages targeting the Snow Leopard.
>> 
>> I see two possible resolutions:
>> 
>> A) Tag builds as 32-bit and 64-bit. At git-scm.com (and github), link to the list that only shows 32-bit builds. For 99.9% (pulled-out-of-butt) of people using the installer, this will be just fine. For people who care about 64 bit, if they are motivated they can build own or find it.
>> 
>> B) Switch to universal architecture and cause everyone to suffer an addition 30% or so wait while downloading the installer.
>> 
>> What do y'all vote for?
> 
> I vote for Universal builds.  I don't think anyone downloading a DMG
> will care between 6M and 9M - it's still smaller than most YouTube
> videos.  Then I can just have people choose their OS version and
> auto-download whatever the latest build is.

Ok, consider it done :). Going forward I will release Universal 32-bit / 64-bit.
> 
> Also, fwiw, though this is the first you may have heard about it, I've
> personally had probably 5 or 6 people approach me at conferences and
> trainings and complain about it - or email me as the maintainer of the
> git-scm page to complain.  I probably should have brought it up
> sooner, but I've just been so happy you've been doing the builds at
> all, I didn't want to complain :)
> 
> Scott

Tim

Re: mac osx

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

[bcc: git list, let's take this off-list, but I do want the record to
show that I do not think this is the way we should communicate on this
list]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 00:40, tom smitts <tomsmitts@ymail.com> wrote:
> Do the git maintainers really think any mac users have
>  a clue which git install package to download?  You
> put some arcane chipset designation in the package
>  name!  Why make mac installers at all?  Mac users
> know their operating system number, e.g. 10.6.7,
> and that's all.  I doubt Windows users know any better.
> And I doubt you can find anywhere on a mac that says
>  i386 or whatever the heck the other dumb
> designation is.

What value does writing your email in this way add? Wouldn't it be
much more productive if instead you had written something like this:

> Hi, I noticed that the mac installers (found here [0]) include a
> chipset designation (such as i386 or x86_64). In my experience,
> Mac users (as well as Windows users) are not familiar with these
> terms, and will not know which to choose. It would perhaps be
> better to rename the package to have a 32bit or 64bit suffix instead,
> which  these users are more likely to know.
> If this is the wrong place to report this issue, please feel free to
> forward this to the appropriate person.
>
> Thanks
>
> http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/list

As you can see it's about as long as your reply, but a lot less
aggressive. It conveys the same information (the current package
naming is sub-optimal), but does so in a much friendlier way.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier