Stupid open-source movement...

Ohhh... The beauty of it all...

The thing comes with documents.

304 KB of documents.

And what do they say?

"This document has been moved. Check the site".

Righty. Thats stupid. Why include them, and not allow me to read them...? o_O

Something tells me I''m better of using DirectX and Win32 for everything... Might look ugly, BUT THERE IS AT LEAST DOCUMENTATION!

And... really nifty...

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT!

And best of all...

IT WORKS!

Guess I''m converted to the dark side now... Yay microsoft!

Yeah, that''s my biggest problem with using Linux, I have to compile everything I download. Sometimes I wonder how the author got their source to compile. Just the other day I downloaded something (I think it was mythtv) and in main.cpp cout was undefined, the author hadn''t #included iostream.h, how did he even get it to compile?



Jason Mickela
ICQ : 873518
Excuse my speling.

The V-Town Have-Nots

Most popular GNU programs do have a binary distribution, yes, for windows too, GNU''s official operating system is (big surprice) Linux, so yes it might be harder to get up and running under windows, but it is posible, get cygwin, and code just like you would under linux, comes with CVS the way it is meant to be, command line, it is not that hard to use once you get a grip on it, also some source code distros (the src.tar.gz kind) like wget do come with makefiles for the Visual C++ Compiler or sometimes even the dsw and dsp files for visual studio (zlib comes to mind).

CVS is meant to keep the code organized, its not just another way to download stuff.

but then, if you dont like it, dont use it, period.

I hate CVS. Plain and simple.

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BASIC programmers don''t die, they just GOSUB and don''t return.

quote:

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Original post by PouyaCat
Something tells me I''m better of using DirectX and Win32 for everything... Might look ugly, BUT THERE IS AT LEAST DOCUMENTATION!

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Um... the grass is always greener...

I guess the choice is this - api documentation or api code? That is, for windows you can generally find so-so documentation for an api, but if you want to look at the code for the api you can''t. At best you can take a look at the WinCE code and guess as to how NT does it.

As far as your gripe about CVS goes - I think you''re spot on. Here''s another gripe. bzip2. The binary to decompress is compressed with guess what? bzip2. The logic of that move escapes me. The obstacle wasn''t insurmountable, but definitely not an optimal strategy for acquiring more users.

"Why do developers have to spend all their time... DEVELOPING? Why the heck can''t they make a pretty-looking installer that''ll hold my hand?"

And the answer is: Because that''s not high on their list of priorities.

Ya see, most of us who care to use bleeding-edge CVS releases are experienced enough with UNIX development that we know how to use CVS. It''s not an especially complicated thing to learn. And many of us much prefer that the developers spend time fixing bugs and adding functionality, rather than preparing releases.

The fact is, binary releases take a fair amount of time to do right. Because of this, developers tend to hold off until major bugfix/functionality changes before actually releasing a new binary. The CVS system allows you to "act as the maintainer" and create your own release, if you''re tired of waiting. Compare this to closed-source projects, where you have to wait until the maintainer gets around to it before getting ANY of the bugfixes.

As to the source: think about it. You''ve got a program that runs on unix, dos, windows, beos, and whatnot... do you actually want to spend time preparing a release for EACH of these? yikes.

If you feel strongly that binaries should be available, I suggest you build the program, package it up, and send it to the developer; I''m sure he/she would be happy to post this "contrib build". That''s what makes open source work.

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Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

I still think that most of it sucks... You spend a lot of time creating something that you can''t even depend on working half-decently.

Nah, I''ll stick with Windows stuff for now. I mean, I code quite a lot with the people I code with... and when someone wants to see a test thing: okay, I hit build, 5/10 minutes later, I can show a .exe. It ain''t that hard to built something.

Well, that is, if you are interested in creating code that can actually compile.

I mean, .exe''s can have bugs. But at least the people who created them wrote code that was capable of compiling. I can''t say that much of most open-source junk ^_^

Well, i think a lot of the open source movement is from programmers, technogeeks, and hackers.

people that look at a text prompt most of their computing experience anyhow.

And people that don't really use that many power applications on a daily basis.

I don't think i've seen any artists or musicians screaming for open source, because we like our nice clean WYSIWYG environment.

Just about every program I run, is hugely graphically based, and reliability and ease of use is my #1 priority, becuase content creators have to concentrate on making content, and not fiddling with compilers.

I use the following applications on a near-daily basis.

Corel Draw
Corel Photopaint
Paint Shop Pro
Macromedia Dreamweaver
CuteFtp
Microsoft Excel
Fruity Loops
Cool Edit Pro
3D Studio Max.
Clarion 4.0 (a database development language)

Since I don't think ANY of these programs are available for linux (i think corel draw MIGHT be available for Linux), there is absolutely no point for me to migrate to linux. Why learn totally new applications that may or may not have the capabilities of my current software (that i have spent years mastering, not to mention the money i spent BUYING the software, and all the content from those programs i have backed up on CD's from years of work). When i can stick to what works, and concentrate on what i do.. make content.

Until linux can do what i need better then i can do it now, i won't even touch it.




[edited by - aegrimonia on August 5, 2002 1:11:02 PM]

well, if you don''t like it then don''t use it. but don''t complain because there are other people in the world that bother to learn how...

** 500 error ***

Well, if you must no why it isn''t in a nice neat little package... CVS was developed for use under UNIX-based operating systems which seem to all thrive on the idea of open source. Most programs for Unix os''s come in source form rather than in binaries for two reasons, A) so that they can be compiled by the user to make sure there aren''t any virus'' etc, and B) because there are so many different Unix os''s like Linux (any of ''em), BSD (any of ''em), Solaris, sun-os, etc that the source for CVS which might have been programmed under FreeBSD may need to be altered a bit to run under NetBSD, or OpenBSD. It may also need some more heavy changes to get it to run on Solaris. And then it was ported to win32, yay. But the Unix mentality still remains, therefore, they make you compile the source and have hard to use command lines. But you know what would be good? Someone going into VB or VC++ and making a GUI for this program and just shell CVS.exe through it =) That would make all of us win32 users happier lol Well, perhaps that''s why anyway

Mindgamez Entertainment

quote:

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Original post by neurokaotix
But you know what would be good? Someone going into VB or VC++ and making a GUI for this program and just shell CVS.exe through it =)

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I think it''s called WinCVS

quote:

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Original post by neurokaotix
But you know what would be good? Someone going into VB or VC++ and making a GUI for this program and just shell CVS.exe through it =) That would make all of us win32 users happier lol Well, perhaps that's why anyway

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You mean, like, WinCVS?

*** 500 ERROR ***

*** 500 ERROR ***

EDIT: Gosh darn you, Martee! If I hadn't gotten those 500 errors...

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Don't listen to me. I've had too much coffee.

[edited by - sneftel on August 5, 2002 1:31:40 PM]

For day-to-day use, TortoiseCVS[1] is far preferrable. WinCVS is, uhmm, sort of weird.
TortoiseCVS integrates into Windows Explorer, and lets you right click on a folder to commit, update, check out etc... It also uses icon overlays on files in a CVS working copy to show you the status of the files - whether they are up to date, conflicted, modified or not in the repository at all. Basically, it covers about 90% of the normal use cases - for the rest, you are better of using the command line client.


[1]www.tortoisecvs.org

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"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes."
Isaac Asimov

Well, before I even touch open source, I would like to mention that CVS sucks. Unconditionally. Like usually (as a software engeneer) I''d mention pros and cons, but in CVS''s case, it sucks. Period. I''ve used many different version control packages and CVS is the worst of them all.

Should I even mention the command line or unix editors? In order to copy a selection I need to press CTRL-5-7-J-L, hit SHIFT, press T five times with the interval of .23 seconds and I will happily copy my selection The situation isn''t much different with the command line parameters. A COMPLETELY unintuitive approach. I could understand (and actually support) teaching people how to program in that environment because old school way is always tougher, but I just can''t understand why would anyone use tools that significantly lower the productivity. Tools are meant to *help* do the job. In unix''s case it''s more like fighting with them to get something done. I know there are people that say it''s easier for them to use "the unix way" but I strongly believe they never really learned a normal IDE. Anyone who spent 6 months programming full time using VC and SourceSafe will never go back to unix environment voluntarily.

Concerning the open source movement... I think most of you already know that open source software is usually garbage. I can''t understand how anyone could expect it to be different. It is extremely difficult to set up good communication practices in a small team located in one office. When a team gets bigger and has multiple departments working on the same product it becomes black magic to collabarate the work. How on earth can someone expect an average joe to make a patch that will not ruin other parts of the software, incorporate it into the code base and have everyone build up on it?!!!

The only acceptable practice is a company that has publically available read only source control server with the latest code. That way anyone can look at the code and send suggestions. Everything else including binaries and installers has to stay.