there's marketing, there's bad marketing, and then there's Microsoft marketing!

hilarious!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/33007219/

quote: "If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool."

But it's a short article; read it!

gitolite is done...

I think gitolite is done now.  It does everything [*] that gitosis does plus a lot more besides.

Here's a brief summary, of what's new and improved, as of today.  Most of this is elaborated here, if you want to read more.

What's NEW:

(1) the original reason for gitolite's creation: per-branch permissions.  Being able to say "only Alice and Bob can push the master branch" is great!

(2) rewind permissions: being able to say "only Alice can rewind any branch" is even greater :-)

(3) very useful logging.  Here's an example:

2009-09-19.10:24:37  +  b4e76569659939  4fb16f2a88d8b5  myrepo refs/heads/master       user2   refs/heads/master

The "+" means this is a rewind (this would be "W" for a fast-forward update).  The two SHAs (14 digits are preserved) are the old and the new.  The repo name, the refname being updated, and the user, are next.  The last field is the exact pattern in the config file that matched to allow this update to happen -- great for debugging (rejected attempts don't come to the log file; but enough info shows up on the user's terminal to debug this anyway)

(4) "personal" namespace for refs, per developer; see the link above for details

(5) you can have "excludes" (aka "deny") in the config file if you use the "rebel" branch.  Suddenly opens up a heck of a lot more power for your access control config :-)

(6) ummm this is not something I'd expect gitosis to have but I also have a migration guide for gitosis users plus a simple tool to convert a gitosis config file to gitolite syntax (except gitweb/daemon config).

What's IMPROVED:

(1) "push to admin" is not available by default.  It's a great feature, but it is a support nightmare, and it's a completely unnecessary hill to force a newbie to climb.  However, I do provide clear instructions on how to set it up yourself, and I admit I use it myself.

(2) the config file has a much saner syntax.  Very clean, no clutter.  Also, you can slice and dice your config anyway you want and gitolite will combine it all in its head.  See example here or elsewhere in the documentation.  If you're not sufficiently impressed by this, you haven't thought about it enough or your needs are not complex enough :-)

(3) the way to specify gitweb and daemon is much more intuitive and consistent with the rest of the "permissions" syntax.  Just treat them as two special users "gitweb" and "daemon" -- if they have read access to a repo, then so does the corresponding tool :-)

(4) combine #2 and #3, and you get far, far, easier ways to setup gitweb/daemon support for many many many repos easily.  Gitosis required you to setup each repo separately in its own paragraph (probably because of the "description" tag)

What's MISSING:

[*] Speaking of the "description" tag, that's the only thing gitosis does which gitolite doesn't.  But you can do it offline if you like, and if you don't use gitweb (I don't) then it may not even matter to you.

perspectives

Our main departmental server had gone down today around 4:30pm; no idea why.  We checked all the usual things and brought it up, and later in the night I had a false alarm that it was down again.  This is what happened after I realised it was a false alarm and felt a little euphoric.

My daughter was standing next to me, so I gave her a hug and said, emotionally, "it's working, it's working, thank God it's working".

She said "what"?

"My server", I replied.

"That's all you can think of"?...  A brief pause; then: "here I am running out of nail polish remover and you're worried about a server?"

Fwd: FW: FRIENDSHIP . . . .

What is friendship?

Someone sent me a semi glurge email talking about how you lose friends by not keeping in touch with them. The UNoriginality and chain nature of that email can be gauged by how quickly I could find a dozen links to the text within the email, just so I can tell you what it was without actually forwarding the email itself.

Anyway, it got me thinking...

I count a few friends whom I will do most anything for. And who've probably done more for me than I have ever done or can do. Not Jai-Veeru level friendship, but ordinary human beings level certainly.

So let's pick one of them.

He and I hardly ever talk. Or even email. No farcebook updates (I'm not even sure he has an account, and I certainly don't) No SMSs (I'm not even sure what his cell phone number is). We don't meet often (he lives in Florida, I in India). Or anything.

But not a month goes by without me thinking of him in some context, and I'm sure it's the same for him. He'll email me when he has something to say, and I'll email him when I have something to say. Otherwise... dead silence.

Notice I said *month* :-) I really don't think of him every single day or week. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course :)

I haven't checked my google account, but vague memory, dulled by 3 rounds of Bailey's Irish Cream, tells me it's been at least 6 months since we last communicated. And in the past it has been as much as 1 year or more at times. And we've only met once in the last 7 years or so.

But when we do email again, we're liable to phrase the email as if we're continuing a conversation that was discontinued just a few minutes ago. Or start a new one without *any* preamble ("hey, how you doing... been a long time... how's the family? Good -- yeah my kids are [blah blah]...", and eventually, get to the nub: "say listen I was wondering, you know that [...] you once mentioned? Well I was talking to a friend...")

So is this friendship? You tell me...

Because according to that email, this guy and I are no longer friends :-)

PS: to all my friends, you know who you are: I love you all. And yes, at least part of that is the Baileys talking, but Baileys can only change the words. Not the thought.

a pol dies an untimely death

I thought I'd always, always, wish ill of any politician.  Any party, but especially this most corrupt and desh-drohi bunch of crooks, led by that Italian woman, selling India down the river in every way imaginable.

Perhaps I'm not as cynical as I thought I was...  because it still feels sad.  All said and done, he has a wife, kids, grandkids...  It's not how many people need you, it's how many people want you that counts I guess, and he will probably be missed by those.

[for my one non-Indian reader: the CM of my state (eqvt to a governer in the US) died in a copter crash yesterday in a remote area]