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by capableweb 2082 days ago
Such a weird approach that seems repeated by many. Instead of building something general that works for most cases and is easier to implement, they focus on specialized cases of specific SCM platforms.

If they started with support Git Remotes and then supporting specific platforms, they would have covered all use cases from the get-go, albeit with slightly poorer UX.

But instead they chose to only support specific platforms, missing plenty of people who actually want to use this, but can't.
1 comments
cdrx 2082 days ago
Git remotes is certainly not "easier to implement". You need to have ssh infrastructure setup to receive the repository, deal with key management, provide the user some way to input ssh keys, etc. Contrast that with GitHub web hooks + API and I can see why they didn't bother.

I bet GitHub covers the vast majority of their target users.

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anderspitman 2082 days ago
Git supports a number of transfer protocols[0]. There's no requirement to support SSH in order to implement pulling from generic repos.

[0]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...

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capableweb 2081 days ago
You really don't need all of that just to support pulling a Git repository, private or otherwise. Adding async nature to a technical problem (webhooks + API as you suggest) immediately makes a otherwise sync problem way harder and error prone.

> I bet GitHub covers the vast majority of their target users.

Sure, but if they added Git, they would reach everyone using GitHub + everyone else who is using Git.

With powerful primitives you can build powerful abstractions, Git is one of the examples of this. But if you instead focus on a single-use case (using GitHub), adding the rest becomes a lot harder, than if you started with the basics. Something 90% of product people in SF seems to have forgotten lately (or never learned?)

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eecc 2082 days ago
Yeah, but that’s how the 80%-rule of “good enough” entrenches the bigger actors, ejecting the otherwise perfectly fine alternatives. It’s the power law that makes the rich richer (and turning everything in a mess of managment-driven kludges.)
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