Re: Call to NOT move to github or gitlab

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 01:42:07PM -0400, Bill Gray wrote:

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20210605
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20210522
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20210515

>    I started on GitHub when I forked PDCurses,  simply because PDCurses was
> already on GitHub.  I've stayed there out of inertia.  All my projects are
> hosted there,  and I haven't had a good reason to leave. But if I had it to
> do over again,  I wouldn't have used GitHub,  and _for a project such as
> ncurses_,  I couldn't recommend GitHub/GitLab. (Not that I think Thomas
> would really consider it.)

as I said...
 
>    On my projects,  I'm doing the vast majority of the programming, and
> there are occasional issues and bug reports and patches submitted (seems
> roughly similar to the traffic on ncurses,  based on what I see on this
> list).  If I had (or if ncurses had) dozens of issues and bugs popping at
> once,  a better issue/bug tracking system might be required.

I find and fix almost all of the issues.

Keeping a diary on github/gitlab would be less efficient
than what I do - see

https://invisible-island.net/personal/self-service.html

Working notes:
     7,352 items
    34,532 lines
   182,420 words
 1,283,680 chars
       628 pages (55 lpp)
       691 pages (50 lpp)
Supporting files/notes:
     6,130 files
      306M chars
 
>    As it stands,  though,  a full-fledged issue/bug tracking system would
> just result in "issues and bug tracking that could have been e-mails".  It'd
> be using a sledgehammer on mosquitoes.

e-mail's efficent too (bugzilla and other non-email systems only add work)
 
>    And,  of course,  if GitHub/GitLab go under,  or if those services no
> longer provide value to the stockholders,  you're out of luck.  I'm only
> mildly concerned about this (I'd lose the "issues",  but could live with
> that),  but there's value to a mailing list that isn't subject to somebody
> else's whims.

I'm betting that savannah makes this mailing list viable longer than I'd
get from github/gitlab.

The mail archives for this list have ~9700 items, starting in 2000-09:

https://invisible-island.net/autoconf/my-autoconf.html#nuisances

I'm still annoyed that the older (pre-September 2000) archives are lost
(some bugs are older than that), but even the existing incomplete
archive is preferable to the suggested alternative, which would discard
the entire set of data.

However, all of this is off-topic, doesn't improve ncurses -

I've been working on memory-leak fixes (which is slow work), and
"showing progress" with simple unrelated fixes.  Aside from the
memory-leaks, I've build-problems with Ada95 on some platforms.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

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