[HN Gopher] WebKit on GitHub
___________________________________________________________________
WebKit on GitHub
Author : miohtama
Score : 212 points
Date : 2022-08-31 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webkit.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (webkit.org)
| doe88 wrote:
| Is there a reason why it seems there is so little
| documentation/comments in source files of WebKit? Or maybe I'm
| missing something/opened the wrong files.
| mnutt wrote:
| Documentation has been a bit of a challenge in my experience.
| There are some high-level docs at https://trac.webkit.org/wiki
| though many are 10-15 years old at this point. My approach has
| been to look at the commit history for the file to see if the
| changesets shed any light, and sometimes go to the attached
| bugzilla link to see if there was any discussion about the
| change there. Then attach a debugger and step through to try to
| uncover how the classes relate to one another.
| tuankiet65 wrote:
| You aren't opening the wrong file, there isn't much
| documentation in WebKit besides a few Markdown files. I'm not
| sure why this is the case.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Most WebKit developers are good at documentation, it's just
| that they often work on things that their employer would not
| like being made obvious because it deals with SPI or unreleased
| products or security vulnerabilities. Commit messages are
| actually pretty good for the most part except in these
| situations where a laconic or purposefully misleading message
| will be used.
| favorited wrote:
| TIL about `git rev-list --count HEAD`. I've been spelling it `git
| rev-list HEAD | wc -l` for years.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yeah I think that's one of those features that comes in handy
| when you're developing on Windows with git
| favorited wrote:
| Interesting - what makes it particularly handy on Windows?
|
| I've only used it for automating build numbers. The number of
| commits on the main branch behaves, in practice, close enough
| to a monotonically increasing counter that it works 99.9% of
| the time without anyone thinking about it.
| klodolph wrote:
| "Handy" because Windows doesn't have the same set of
| utilities like wc.
| cerved wrote:
| in git for windows, wc is included
| xfmpXIe76lF4GfR wrote:
| Depending on which git distro you installed and what
| options you chose, sure.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| License?
|
| Maybe I just can't find it but what's the license used for
| Webkit? It doesn't appear in the repo.
| cxr wrote:
| > License? [...] It doesn't appear in the repo.
|
| Wrong. There are copyright notices and license terms at the top
| of every noteworthy file that contains substantial code.
| stcont wrote:
| BSD for some, LGPL v 2 for the rest.
| nailer wrote:
| Webkit is a fork of KHTML so presumably restricted (not not) by
| whatever the open source license KHTML license allows.
| sedeki wrote:
| They mention that they'd ideally want a natural ordering on the
| commit hashes. Something to do with their zero-tolerence security
| policy.
|
| What's the background there? Why do they need a natural ordering?
| anderskaseorg wrote:
| Git already has an ordering like this built in as 'git
| describe'.
|
| https://git-scm.com/docs/git-describe $ git
| describe 593a2a5d0639b4b4f91ff6e6ffb64e72020f8fd8
| v2.34.1-83-g593a2a5d06
|
| This commit is 83 commits after the v2.34.1 tag. Git accepts
| this identifier anywhere it would accept a commit hash, e.g.:
| $ git log v2.34.1-83-g593a2a5d06 $ git show
| v2.34.1-83-g593a2a5d06:branch.c
|
| https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/commit/?id=v2.34....
| cerved wrote:
| they want a global, presumably centralized, order
| Trufa wrote:
| I have literally 0 inside knowledge but from the article it
| seems to be a more human visual thing than a software problem,
| something like this was working in 12 and broken in 13 is a
| more obvious regression than this was working in aaab131 and
| broken in ccad53s
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| 13 being greater than 12 is not a property that's just for
| human vision. In Subversion a commit on a branch increments
| the _global_ commit number.
|
| Git doesn't have a concept of one commit being before or
| after another once you've branched, or any native mechanism
| for enforcing global state across branches.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Sequential IDs also let you think about ranges: a feature was
| introduced in 11, broke in 17-23, and worked thereafter.
|
| I used SVN like this in grad school: data files included the
| SVN $Id$ of the script that generated them. This let you work
| around bugs and experimental changes. For example, you might
| hardcode a delay, realize it should be longer, and then
| eventually decide to let the experimenter adjust it on the
| fly. This is easy with sequential ids: if
| version < 11: delay = 50 elif 11 <= version
| < 29: delay = 100 else delay =
| params.delay
|
| Using git hashes, you'd need to maintain an exhaustive list
| of every version ever run, which is even tricker because
| there isn't a sole source of truth like an SVN repo.
| cerved wrote:
| I must be missing something because this seems odd, why
| isn't this code just different in each corresponding
| version?
| mattkrause wrote:
| The SVN-controlled code _generated_ data by controlling
| hardware and embedded the $Id$ of the controlling script
| in its output. I would then refer to the version ID
| later, when loading that data in for _analysis_. This
| accounted for any changes to the data-generating code.
|
| Sometimes these were bugs. For example, we tracked the
| orientation and direction of objects moving on a screen.
| One update redefined 0deg to be up/north/12:00 instead of
| the +x direction used before. The code which loaded these
| files checked the $Id$ value and rotated the directional
| data so that the entire dataset used the same definition.
| xfmpXIe76lF4GfR wrote:
| Git also lets you think about ranges. You just tell it the
| range and it figures out what commits are in the range. You
| can also get a sequential number from whatever point you
| choose with tools like `git describe`.
| tln wrote:
| "zero-tolerance performance regression policy"... no patch can
| land if it regresses benchmarked performance.
|
| I'm guessing the tooling around this used subversion's
| increasing commit numbers and it was easier to add a shim to
| git, than to rewrite or rethink the tooling.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > no patch can land if it regresses benchmarked performance
|
| ..unless it fixes some important security vulnerability, one
| hopes..
| mhh__ wrote:
| the trick is to change the benchmark at the same time
| btown wrote:
| Via https://webkit.org/performance/ :
|
| > If a patch lands that regresses performance according to
| our benchmarks, then the person responsible must either
| back the patch out of the tree or drop everything
| immediately and fix the regression.
|
| I imagine that a security hotfix would lead almost
| immediately to the second situation (perhaps as soon as the
| implementor had gotten some sleep!)
| xfmpXIe76lF4GfR wrote:
| git literally has built-in tooling for this. It's called
| bisect (and they literally mention "bisection" in the next
| sentence).
| nemetroid wrote:
| Zero-tolerance _performance_ policy. You can find the policy
| [1] by searching the web. And the _hashes_ don 't have to be
| ordered.
|
| 1: https://webkit.org/performance/
| brnt wrote:
| Could WebKit be a viable alternative to Blink, should Mozilla
| bite the dust?
| cwp wrote:
| Sigh... apparently I'm old.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Apple has iOS browser control on complete lockdown, so even if
| it performed as bad as Gecko, they're pretty well off.
|
| > bite the dust
|
| If I were ceo of Mozilla I would have cut off Firefox
| development like 5 years ago. It doesn't look pretty, but AOL
| and Yahoo changed assets, they don't look as ugly. But I also
| hate a lot of what they currently stand for, and they don't
| really have assets. They're like some NPR for web standards
| documentation, and while it is the best, it's not very
| valuable. Google seems to have a lot of leading control while
| Mozilla is angry outside, with a megaphone, and red-orange dyed
| hair.
|
| They've always been open source, they'll die of natural causes.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > But I also hate a lot of what they currently stand for.
|
| What exactly out of this this you hate so much?
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| lol so much noise, if this is a browser dev company,
| they're no better than I am on HN right now during work
| hours.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| But it's far more than a browser dev company, and the
| Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit entity.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I guess, I hate to be more pessimistic than I already am,
| but when I see pointless petitions to "Facebook: Stop
| Group Recommendations" I don't see anyone over there
| truly "fighting the good fight". I think GNU is a far
| better example of this type of action.
|
| I think an open source foundation has to stand on the
| shoulder of a valuable product to get noticed. GNU has
| all of its things, Mozilla is an acoustic guitar busker
| playing "bulls on parade by Ratm" outside of a Barnes and
| Nobles.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Mozilla: A healthy internet requires an active, global
| community.
|
| Also Mozilla: We need more than deplatforming [of those we
| disagree with and already attempted to deplatform]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Personally? All of it.
|
| None of Mozilla's virtue signalling serves to bring back
| the Firefox of yore. Firefox has instead followed Chrome's
| heels at every turn to the point I might as well just use
| the real deal rather than a third-rate knock off.
|
| I want a lean, effective browser that I can tailor to my
| specific needs and desires, and Firefox has been not that
| for at least 20 years.
|
| Mozilla is (supposed to be) a collective of computer
| programmers, not activists and lobbyists. So fuck their
| advocacy, more accurately virtue signalling. All of it. The
| specifics don't matter. Fuck all of that noise. If they go
| back to making some good software I might be more
| supportive and respectful of them again, but not a step
| before.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| What does Mozilla biting the dust have to do with WebKit being
| viable?
|
| And even if they did, I think Gecko has enough of a fan base
| that it would live on for a very long time. NetSurf and Dillo
| are still around after all.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Blink is a fork of WebKit. Apple manages WebKit development.
| Google manages Blink development.
| no_way wrote:
| It is a fork, but that was really long time ago, most parts
| of both engines were completely rewritten so for all intents
| and purposes these are completely different engines.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| They've splintered a ton over the years for sure, but there
| are still similarities. But yes, this isn't like the first
| few years when Blink was just WebKit with V8.
|
| But on the whole, Blink is still more similar to WebKit
| than it is to Gecko.
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe not _really long time_ ago, maybe around ten if I 'm
| remembering correctly. But, maybe in _web time_ , that's
| pretty long time ago.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Ideally, we need both Gecko and WebKit to be healthy, with
| additional promising alternatives on the horizon.
| [deleted]
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| 1. Yes
|
| 2. No
| olliej wrote:
| right? We already have an IE-esque level of monopoly and
| associated behavior from chrome/blink. Making it just
| blink+webkit seems like it would be even worse - even though
| they have diverged significantly it's also wrong to think
| they're "different" in the sense of gecko and blink/webkit or
| even presto.
|
| I think the real problem is the gecko and spidermonkey seem
| to be falling significantly behind on real user experience.
| This is ignoring the Firefox application itself which I find
| super irksome.
|
| But as their gross built in tracking+advertising shows they
| are at least somewhat hurting for cash which does not help,
| and encourages gross stuff like said spam+tracking.
|
| It doesn't help that the google folk keep shoving out half-
| assed specs for whatever some google team has decided they
| want/need with specs but little thought of generally of how
| to make more universal solutions. That just means you've got
| constant pressure to implement ever increasing numbers of
| standards just to stay in place - if apple (and technically
| MS in the past) has difficulty keeping up with the constant
| "spec" spam it's hard to see Mozilla managing in the longer
| term.
| sph wrote:
| Not any more viable than it is now.
|
| Brendan Eich IIRC said they looked into building Brave on top
| of Webkit but it was so hard to compile and embed across all
| three platforms that they went with Chromium. Same story with
| Gecko.
|
| So that's another reason why we now have a Blink monoculture:
| because the alternative engines didn't spend any effort in
| making them usable by third party applications.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| If that's the same WebKit powering Safari, why not. It's the
| second most popular browser after all.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| It's also the worst browser and the bane of every developers
| existence. It's legit the new IE.
| brnt wrote:
| AFAIK, Apples control over WebKit is not any less than
| Googles over Blink, which many say is the source of many of
| the webs problems. I remember the days Apple posted tarballs
| infrequently. I'm wondering if this move may open development
| up, and thus may become a codebase more widely 'owned' than
| Blink's.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The problem with Blink is not necessarily that Google
| controls it, the problem is that Blink owns the lion's
| share of the browser market. This makes Google's control of
| Blink a problem, since it effectively means Google controls
| the lion's share of the browser market.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Apples control over WebKit is not any less than Googles
| over Blink, which many say is the source of many of the
| webs problems
|
| I'd say that the issue with Google's control of web
| standards stem from their surveillance capitalism business
| model.
| pdpi wrote:
| Microsoft's stranglehold over the browser market was a
| pretty huge problem, irrespective of their business
| model. The web is way too important to be so tightly
| controlled by one single company, no matter who they may
| be.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Microsoft's business model was 'we need to deal with
| Netscape before the Web kicks our ass' followed by 'we
| own the market now, no need to spend resources improving
| this'.
|
| Of course, Firefox and later Chrome came around, so in
| the end the Web kicked Microsoft's ass anyway.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It isn't Microsoft that has entered the extinguish phase
| for ad blocking browser add-ons. I also don't remember
| Microsoft doing anything as anti-user as trying to keep
| pop-up blockers from working back in the bad old days.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I mean, Blink is a fork of WebKit, so yes? But it's also even
| less-responsive to upstream contributions so, outside of
| embedded systems that had previously adopted WebKit, I
| seriously doubt it'll recapture the traction it had before the
| fork.
| tpoacher wrote:
| The title on HN is a bit silly.
|
| Presumably they migrated from subversion to git. And then hosted
| their bare git repository Github to serve as their "central"
| repository.
|
| So, where was their svn repository hosted before this?
| [deleted]
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| On their own SVN instance on WebKit.org (which is maintained by
| Apple)
| latchkey wrote:
| As someone who was there in the very very early Subversion
| meetings, I'm surprised it took this long for them to migrate.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If they had floating or dynamic externals and a bunch of
| permission models, I'm not surprised at all. I'd label this
| more of a conversion versus a migration.
| xtracto wrote:
| I remember migrating some codebase from CVS to SVN ... and this
| was sometime after CVS was adopted instead of "at the end of
| the day, every dev will copy his change into a floppy disk and
| give it to the Tech Lead for merging".
|
| This was during the 90s in a software development company in
| Mexico. Good times!
| miohtama wrote:
| What's a decade or two in the grand scale :)
| olliej wrote:
| The Git dev model is _very_ different from cvs, svn, etc so the
| trade offs are less obvious.
|
| A lot of the benefit of git to me has always been the local
| development model, but the git-svn bridge made that largely
| transparent which I think lowered the pressure to change.
| latchkey wrote:
| > The Git dev model is _very_ different from cvs, svn, etc so
| the trade offs are less obvious.
|
| I think that the difference makes the tradeoffs using
| anything other than git, more obvious. I even held out myself
| for a very long time with svn vs. git and once I switched...
| I kicked myself for not doing so earlier.
|
| But, like they said in the post... they did need a feature,
| which is core to svn (incrementing changelog ids) and a
| workaround in git. Minor in the grand scheme of things.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| This is one of those things you don't really want to announce.
| It's best to quietly make the migration and sweep it under the
| rug.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Why wouldn't an open source project announce a change to the
| place their source is hosted on their own blog? Why would they
| want to sweep it under the rug?
| ian-g wrote:
| I mean, as far as annoucements go, it's a pretty quiet one.
|
| We did this. We chose the obvious host. We like ordering
| commits chronologically, we came up with something for that. Ok
| bye.
| williamscales wrote:
| Does Apple not have an internal department that handles this
| for all their teams? Seems kinda weird for a division of a
| company to even have to choose their host.
| olliej wrote:
| The Open-source projects generally do things separately -
| e.g. llvm, as you're otherwise requiring apple set up a new
| account system (blocking contributing on iCloud account
| would seem less great), and building up its own UI and
| infrastructure for a git interface.
|
| Also given that GitHub is a somewhat universally understood
| host that people seem to like, and it has all that
| UI/development integration that people like it kind of
| makes sense to just use that. It also seems that having
| GitHub accounts is increasingly widely spread so
| contributors would not necessarily have to create yet
| another account with yet another service.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Why risk anything at all, who outside webkit developers needs
| to know this?
|
| Idk how investors, or any powerful external entities think,
| but switching to Git in 2022 isn't net positive news.
|
| It may be a subtle announcement, but it made it's way onto
| the forum of a Startup generator / Investment fund.
| barkingcat wrote:
| No way ... as an open source project this is the kind of thing
| you want to tell everyone.
| joemaller1 wrote:
| Curious to see how this affects contributions.
| lxe wrote:
| > git's distributed nature makes it easy for not just multiple
| developers, but multiple organizations to collaborate on a single
| project.
|
| Git is as "distributed" as Ethereum at this point. You have a
| central repo on github onto which you push changes. Just because
| you have a copy of the main branch when you're working on stuff,
| it's no different from SVN.
|
| Yes it has the capability to be distributed, and individual
| contributors can certainly host their own git servers and you can
| have as many remotes as there are contributors, but we aren't
| doing things this way are we?
| simonw wrote:
| I think the point here is that you ARE doing things that way if
| you are multiple companies collaborating on something at the
| scale of WebKit.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You are seeing the tip of the iceburg. The most discoverable
| online platform is github and others exist at much smaller
| numbers. Because these are public they are easy to see and
| count. Private instances are hidden by default which makes them
| hard to count.
| aendruk wrote:
| That's a hefty repository if all you want [1] is part of it.
| Subversion offers a way to download just a subdirectory; is there
| an analogous solution for Git?
|
| [1]: https://github.com/HimbeersaftLP/ios-safari-remote-debug-
| kit...
| a_t48 wrote:
| `git subtree` but it might still download the whole history
| gman83 wrote:
| sparse-checkout -- https://github.blog/2020-01-17-bring-your-
| monorepo-down-to-s...
| nimbius wrote:
| github has had more than _fifty_ outages this year alone, and has
| a rocky history of recourselessly banning users from countries
| that are sanctioned by the United States. switching to github
| makes no sense if "The WebKit project is interested in
| contributions and feedback from developers around the world."
|
| https://www.githubstatus.com/
|
| who made this decision?
| ranman wrote:
| FWIW not all of those outages were the core git/web product. A
| lot of those were GitHub actions or other associated
| functionality... but yeah it goes down disturbingly often given
| how much we all depend on it.
| stusmall wrote:
| I don't think WebKit reasonably sees itself as a risk for US
| sanctions unless they have an open source money laundering
| feature that no one has told me about.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Have you ever used SVN?
|
| It's like git, but even more connected to a centralized server.
| lapinot wrote:
| I think GP is not talking about git in general, but about
| choosing a free-tier hosting by an american commercial
| entity, and not by the project itself or some other umbrella
| organization.
| therealmarv wrote:
| hm, git is distributed and works offline https://git-
| scm.com/about/distributed
| profmonocle wrote:
| It "works offline" in that you can create commits, view
| project history, and view every branch while offline. But
| fetching and pushing are such a common part of an engineer's
| day-to-day workflow that a poorly-timed outage of your remote
| repo is very disruptive, especially if you use git for
| deployment.
| [deleted]
| maxwell wrote:
| > recourselessly banning users from countries that are
| sanctioned by the United States
|
| Are you suggesting that Microsoft should intentionally opt not
| to comply with OFAC sanctions?
|
| Do you know of any non-OFAC sanctioned entities that have made
| that choice?
|
| Are you aware of any OFAC sanctioned entities that maintain
| public accounts on any other code sharing sites?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| AFAIK Github can provide free access to public repositories
| even if the users are subject to OFAC sanctions. In some
| cases they've applied for (and received) exemptions to allow
| for sales of paid services:
| https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-
| freedom-g...
| klodolph wrote:
| I think the bigger picture here is the migration to Git, since
| that lets you keep working during an outage. SVN does not.
| lapinot wrote:
| > I think the bigger picture here is the migration to Git
|
| Is it tho? Why wouldn't they just install git on their
| server? Now there is not many mainstream successful social
| hosting for svn. They acknowledge the choice of github is to
| attract devs. So it's as much about the software as about the
| type of hosting and web presence.
| ajross wrote:
| In fact the very fact that your source control hosting
| service can be surpringly[1] unreliable is the best
| advertisement for git you could imagine.
|
| In fact, if github disappeared from the internet today, all
| but the largest projects could just set up an ssh-accessible
| box somewhere and continue work (code review and issue
| interfaces notwithstanding, of course), probably with 24
| hours.
|
| [1] I work in github-cloned repositories almost full time.
| And sure, I remember a handful of times over the past 4-5
| years where it's been down when I wanted to push something. I
| had no idea it was 50x/year! And that's because "working in a
| github-cloned repository" doesn't, in fact, require much
| contact with github itself.
| schmichael wrote:
| > github has had more than fifty outages this year alone
|
| I'm a heavy user of github every day and maybe 1 or 2 of these
| caused me any disruption whatsoever. Most of the time I think
| they created productivity boosts as people just focused on what
| they were working on instead of reacting to Github
| notifications about issues or PRs or failing tests or whatever.
|
| > a rocky history of recourselessly banning users from
| countries that are sanctioned by the United States
|
| This is likely a feature for companies, projects, and
| organizations who have (or want) to adhere to the same strict
| regulations.
| [deleted]
| tolmasky wrote:
| Funny story: my first task when I joined the original iPhone team
| was to merge our forked WebKit with master. It was a sort of
| hazing ritual slash "when else would we do it but when someone
| new joins?". Anyways, we used a tool called SVK[1] in order to
| get very primitive "git-like" abilities. It was basically a bunch
| of scripts that used SVN under the hood. For example, in order to
| get the "local everything"-style behaviors of git, the very first
| thing it did was checkout every single version of the repository
| in question. For WebKit, this meant that the first day was spent
| leaving the computer alone and letting it download for hours. I
| made the mistake of having a space somewhere in the path of the
| target folder, which broke something or other, so I ended up
| having to do it all over again.
|
| Anyways, I distinctly remember one of the instructions for
| merging WebKit in our internal wiki being something like "now
| type `svk merge`, but hit ctrl-c immediately after! You don't
| want to use the built-in merge, it'll break everything, but this
| is the only way to get a magic number that you can find stored in
| [some file] after the merge has started. If it's not there, try
| `svk merge` again and let it go a little longer than last time."
| A few hires later (I think possibly a year after) someone set up
| a git mirror internally to avoid having to do this craziness,
| which if I remember correctly, was treated with some skepticism.
| This was 2007, so why would we try some new-fangled git thing
| when we had svk?
|
| 1. https://wiki.c2.com/?SvkVersionControl
| evmar wrote:
| We had a similar rotation on Chrome team for merges from WebKit
| (pre fork), and it was similarly a lot of work and clunky
| tooling!
|
| A few times in my career (including this one) I have thought,
| "We are sure going to a lot of effort to maintain a modified
| copy of that code while also preserving our changes atop it as
| we sync, and this is exactly the kind of workflow that Git was
| designed to enable." Like, the Linux kernel dev workflow is all
| about different maintainers maintaining different branches and
| merging between them, and that is where Git comes from.
|
| So in a setting other than Chrome I have tried out using Git to
| try to manage these sorts of situation. I have found in
| practice many engineers aren't comfortable enough with Git to
| have it end up helping them out tooling-wise. This is
| disappointing but also not too unexpected given Git's UI.
| taberiand wrote:
| I don't understand any developer's that aren't willing to put
| in the time to learn how to use Git - to me, it's the single
| greatest tool available to enable productivity and confidence
| in changing code. There's no shame in using any one of the
| many GUI interfaces for Git that make the process simple and
| intuitive but even with the CLI, there are only a small
| handful of commands that I regularly need to use to do all
| the work of managing branches, merges, rebases and resets;
| and a lot of the time, there's more than one way to do any
| particular operation.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm totally willing to learn the magic of advanced merging,
| but most "tell me more about Git" talks/articles rather
| want to tell me more about its general internal structure,
| which I find very far removed from actually using it.
|
| So what's the best resource for learning more about using
| Git?
| rascul wrote:
| https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2
| saagarjha wrote:
| > I don't understand any developer's that aren't willing to
| put in the time to learn how to use Git
|
| Other version control systems exist. Why learn Git if
| you've already got one that works?
| evmar wrote:
| To be clear, I think many developers are comfortable enough
| with the small handful of commands most regularly use. For
| the more complex case of maintaining a fork of a complex
| codebase like WebKit, it's likely you'll need a deeper
| understanding of remotes and how to manage complex rebases,
| especially in the presence of lots of conflicts. And
| possibly some fancier tools like git-subtree. In particular
| in WebKit my recollection was it was common to patch
| something locally and eventually take it upstream, but
| after upstream's requested modifications the patch would
| eventually come back around and conflict with itself.
| olliej wrote:
| Awwwww, I remember back in the days of dealing with CVS, where
| there was so much scripting to try and manage basic stuff we take
| for granted like creating patches that included new files.
|
| Subversion was so undeniably superior that everyone was super
| happy and instant. Git took much much longer as the complexity
| vs. the win was much more debatable to people, so it's
| interesting to see this finally happening - I will miss linearly
| increasing revision numbers though.
|
| Glad to see they're keeping with bugzilla though - for whatever
| reason I find the GitHub issue tracker super annoying. Presumably
| at least part of that is familiarity and/or change resistance :D
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| With the bugzilla issue tracker, they keep ownership.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I remember when CVS was the new hotness. I was on a team of 3
| at the time (90s), and one of our members worked remotely, so
| the fact that it was actually usable over a dial up connection
| was a killer feature for us. Also pretty much anything was
| better than SourceSafe, which is what everybody else in the
| company was using.
| a-dub wrote:
| > Subversion was so undeniably superior that everyone was super
| happy and instant. Git took much much longer as the complexity
| vs. the win was much more debatable to people, so it's
| interesting to see this finally happening - I will miss
| linearly increasing revision numbers though.
|
| p4 and then git were easy sells for large projects. while
| subversion was faster than cvs with its local hidden copy, many
| operations were still dog slow as they'd scan the whole
| repository (this was often worked around by creating lots of
| small repositories with associated wrapper scripts). p4 and git
| on the other hand were designed to handle large trees with
| ease. so for something on the scale of an operating system,
| browser, or both... the difference in productivity was
| significant. (tens of minutes vs single digit seconds for basic
| operations)
| [deleted]
| mnd999 wrote:
| Strange choice given how GitHub seems to have moved into the
| extinguish phase.
| _rrnv wrote:
| Subversion started in that phase so maybe they're just trying
| to delay the inevitable.
| srvmshr wrote:
| GitHub is a company & git is a core technology which is
| replacing Subversion for version control. FWIW, WebKit could
| have moved to Gitlab, Gitea or Bitbucket & still used git.
| Subversion & CVS's days are numbered - the writing was on the
| wall for many years
| olliej wrote:
| What do you mean? (Not facetious, I'm out of the loop on such
| matters - I thought it was still just git on the cli?)
| avg_dev wrote:
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/jun/30/give-up-github-
| la...
| beermonster wrote:
| I assumed it to mean, what with GH being owned by Microsoft,
| it's now in the extinguish phase of EEE (embrace, extend,
| extinguish). Though if anything I think it's in the extend
| phase.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Yes, that was what I meant.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| What does Apple use for source control ???. I know Google is all
| custom and MS uses (???) a modified instance of Perforce.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Lots of Git projects. Internal development has centered around
| using Git, even for WebKit, for several years.
| bragr wrote:
| Microsoft maintains the entire Windows source tree in Git now
| and has made some really interesting contributions to git where
| it comes to very large projects, though I don't know about the
| penetration throughout other dev groups. They also own Github
| now obviously.
| caycep wrote:
| was this before or after the github acquisition? I figure if
| they were going to spend the money for github they probably
| intend for git to have a bigger role
| [deleted]
| dark-star wrote:
| long before
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