Anarcat

@Anarcat@kolektiva.social

Debian developer, sysadmin, ex-entrepreneur, anarchist, photographer, musician, writer.

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b0rk, to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

i've been hearing a lot from folks on here who are frustrated with git (for many good reasons!)

but I'm curious about the opposite perspective: if you've worked with more than one version control system over the years and you prefer git, I'd love to know:

a) what other systems have you worked with? (hg? svn? p4?)
b) why do you prefer git?

notes:

  • please no replies about why you think git is worse
  • interested in answers other than "because I have no choice"
Anarcat,

@b0rk i have used a lot of VCS: RCS, CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Git, and those are only the ones I decided to use (on top of some i had to use like darcs or bazar). i used to really dislike Git: it was much less intuitive than SVN or Mercurial, which I prefered then; i found the git folks had an attitude problem (is linus cured yet?), and that the implementation details leaked all over the place and made it unusable.

but then, i decided to learn how git works, swallowed the pill, and it ... just worked. it was so much faster and offline support was better (SVN didn't have any unless you count SVK). then someone showed me add -p and rebase and i never looked back.

i still find git less usable than SVN or hg, especially for new users, and your recent posts really show how bad this is. there has been some improvements (e.g. switch and restore, even though I can't rewire my brain for those), but they are far from addressing the fundamental issues... i suspect Git folks don't really want to fix those issues at all

Anarcat, to random

come work with me at the #Tor Project! we're hiring a sysadmin, details here https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/system-administrator/ ask me anything #job

Anarcat,

update: this job posting is going to expire in a week!

Anarcat, to random

it's really sad that FSF membership, in a resume, has turned into a badge of honor into something that raises somewhat of a red flag for me

Anarcat,

@magicfab yes

b0rk, (edited ) to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

poll: how confident do you feel that you know what the term "fast-forward" means in git, for example in this error message:

! [rejected] main -> main (non-fast-forward)

or this one:

fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.

(I promise this is not a trick question, I'm just writing a blog post about git terminology and I'm trying to gauge how people feel about various core git terms)

Anarcat,

@b0rk can we tell git it's wrong? :P

petersuber, to Texas

"A school district will no longer have . Spring Branch Independent School District eliminated all librarian positions due to budget cuts…Superintendent Jennifer Blaine blamed the $35m deficit on the Texas legislature’s failure to boost public school funding amid Governor ’s fight for school ."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/texas-houston-school-district-librarians-b2507657.html

PS: The case against vouchers has been that they drain money from public schools. QED.

Anarcat,

@petersuber i guess that's one way of not having to sue and jail librarians for existing...

kees, to random
Anarcat,

@kees i don't know what the big deal is with "tab" vs "space", i always hit "tab" to intend my lines, no idea how hitting "space" is supposed to indent anything really... ;)

jacob, to random
@jacob@jacobian.org avatar

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series on estimation. But I left something out: the pre-requisite step of “breaking down” a project into constituent tasks. For me, breaking down tasks is largely intuitive — "think about the project and then write the task list" is how I might have described it. But that's a deeply unsatisfying “just draw the rest of the owl" sort of answer. So, here's a deep dive into what’s going on in my brain when I break down a project into tasks:

https://jacobian.org/2024/mar/11/breaking-down-tasks/

Anarcat,

@jacob in my case, i think it's more being afraid of my own incompetence. too often have i tried to come up with estimates and utterly failed to come even remotely close to something accurate. i think most programmers vastly underestimate the amount of work needed to get their work done, and don't want to admit that it takes that long to "just do X"

Anarcat,

@jacob also, i should mention that your work on estimates has changed my life, in that sense, i'm much closer to meeting my estimates now that i have your "uncertainty" ideas in there, so thank you so much for sharing that, really useful stuff!

OdyX, to random French
@OdyX@framapiaf.org avatar

https://lists.debian.org/debconf-announce/2024/03/msg00000.html

> DebConf25 will be held in Brest, France.

Yay.

Anarcat,

@highvoltage @OdyX or, rather, yé!

b0rk, (edited ) to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

poll: did you know that in a git merge conflict, the order of the code is different when you do a merge/rebase?

merge:

<<<<<<< HEAD
YOUR CODE

OTHER BRANCH'S CODE
>>>>>>> c694cf8aabe

rebase:

<<<<<<< HEAD
OTHER BRANCH'S CODE

YOUR CODE
>>>>>>> d945752 (your commit message)

(where "YOUR CODE" is the code from the branch you were on when you ran git merge or git rebase)

Anarcat,

@b0rk i answered "no" but would have loved a "OMG WTF THAT IS WHY I AM ALWAYS CONFUSED ABOUT THIS?" this is PHP-class level of "let's swap the order of arguments randomly to keep people from learning our shit", needle-haystack anyone?

monsieuricon, to random

Welcome back to the time of year when my OCD is triggered every time someone tries to schedule a meeting with me in "EST."

Anarcat,

@monsieuricon @monsieuricon would you have prefered "UTC-5"? :P

Anarcat,

@monsieuricon i had fun with the "EST5EDT" "zone" in the past, i don't think i'll ever get past that trauma... and it's probably a footgun i've left in undertime(1) still...

leftpaddotpy, to postgres
@leftpaddotpy@hachyderm.io avatar

good evening! do you use software of any description? ? ?

have you found the manuals annoying and hard to find things in, or telling you to go f-- err i mean read the info page?

consider using the single page builds of such reference manuals on https://docs.jade.fyi

they have nice CSS and no page splitting so you can simply hit ctrl f

Anarcat,

@leftpaddotpy hey @zekjur this looks like what we were thinking about doing as an addon to manpages.debian.org!

Anarcat, to random

mind blown: i can build an GRML ISO completely in RAM, and it takes 6 minutes, including installing a lot of packages. computers did get faster for some things...

Anarcat,

oh, and that includes 4 minutes for compiling ZFS, the actual build time is closer to 2 minutes

jacob, to random
@jacob@jacobian.org avatar

I'm also finding Claude Opus to be better that GPT-4, to the point that I'm switching my $20 from OpenAI over to Anthropic for a bit.
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/112061389725778816

Anarcat,

@jacob claude does look interesting, but why on earth isn't it available in canada?

Anarcat, to random

i love it when the internet tells you how wrong you are and that the solution is just a matter of renting a 10$/mth vps, that's what i'm here for

strypey, to random
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

"...free-ish alternatives include Quay.io (currently free for public repos) and sr.ht (2$/mth, but at least not open-core, unfortunately no plan for a container registry). And of course, you can painfully self-host GitLab, sr.ht, gitea, pagure, or whatever it is the current fancy gitweb."

https://anarc.at/blog/2022-09-06-deleted-gitlab/

Another option is @Codeberg, an instance of Forgejo (originally forked from Gitea).

BTW is this your blog @Anarcat?

Anarcat,

@strypey @Codeberg yes

Anarcat,

@lightweight @Codeberg @strypey my blog tends to be subjective, it's not a newspaper or magazine (and even that would not be objective). 'painful' is definitely subjective, in any case. it is the pain i am receiving in self-hosting gitlab, of which i have extensive experience. it is not "trivial", nor is the cost "vanishingly small"

Anarcat,

@lightweight @Codeberg @strypey or to put this another way: my experience is hosting gitlab.torproject.org, what's yours?

jbcrawford, to random
@jbcrawford@hachyderm.io avatar

Actually let's ramble a bit about "rental" printing, it's an interesting topic.

This idea isn't new. For decades, most businesses have not owned their printers, they have leased them from a printer/office machines company that charged per page. The management company did all the maintenance and handled supplies, and amortized the cost of the printer. These are all things that businesses like since they make expenses more consistent and avoid the need for specialized staff.

Anarcat,

@jbcrawford this is all quite fascinating, but can you tell me which color laser printer i can buy that (a) is not a giant multifunction machine with a fax machine hidden in there (b) doesn't suck (c) works in linux (d) doesn't cost a fortune and a half in toner and (e) is for sale at an actual store? #ktxbye ;)

Anarcat, to random

i just realized that i should need a TL;DR: at the top of my emails, that's what the frigging Subject line is for

Anarcat,

you'd think i would have learned this earlier in my 30+ years experience with email, but it seems you'd have been wrong (or maybe i unlearned and just write too damn much)

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