Fewer commits on YouTube-DL recently | Hacker News Reader

Fewer commits on YouTube-DL recently

github.com

102 pointsllacb4743 comments

Something doesn't feel right about this. There could be many reasons why a project doesn't get as many commits for a little while. I don't think this counts as significant new information (SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20informa...). Singling one project out for drama as a way of putting pressure on people doesn't feel right, nor in keeping with the intended spirit of HN.

I've changed the title to make it less dramatic ("Had to choose this dramatic title to get some attention"? not here, please) and I think this is a rare case where we should probably kill the thread.

Huh? The most recent commit is from yesterday.

The comment "I cant download anything of YouTube atm and they havent updated in a month" suggests some incredibly unfair and unrealistic expectations on the part of the maintainers of this free software.

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/commit-activit... actually suggests that something did happen ~10 weeks ago, with about as many commits since then as there was in an average week before then.

I don't find this compelling evidence that the project is "dying" and it's obviously not "unmaintained."

youtube-dl has a very permissive license if someone else thinks they can merge PRs faster, they can go right ahead.

Indeed, I don't get what they're talking about either.

I use youtube-dl every few days, and it works perfectly for me. I'm always amazed by how when it stops working, an update is released a few hours later.

I updated my youtube-dl two days ago and was able to download a file. I think the poster might have been using an outdated version. Things do change on YouTube.

Yeah. Hope this thread doesn't get spread around to much, seldom does good come from half the internet piling into one issue.

I have to say, the youtube-dl issues tab is one of the most toxic and filled with entitled people I've ever seen. I visited it a couple months ago and it is appalling how rude people can be.

I would not be surprised at all if the maintainers are stepping away for interpersonal reasons. Though, I am not implying this is the case.

Right, that's one of the projects that seems to be a nightmare to maintain and you'd want paid moderators for because its just so much...

Well no, just go away from github, it's the twitter of Git-Hosting-Plattform's.

An example why you don't want to work on a (a-)social git network:

https://nikolas.github.io/github-drama/

As if other code collaboration methods don't have drama. Making it obscure to access can help somewhat, but also gets in the way of contributors.

True, but still don't sit in the middle of the troll-hole, maybe the troll will find you in the Forrest but the chance is much smaller, and the best thing is always, make them create a new email for every troll attempt too your mail-list, and even more important ban them fast and forever. It's your health and your joy in that project otherwise both get destroyed over time, they don't pay you and with that have Zero rights to say something against your project, ban them! If they want to change something let them fork.

EDIT: If a contributor wants to help he will take that extra step or just send you the patch over mail-list, don't work with twitter-style fast-com tools, work with well thought out slow-com tools like mail.

Maybe the maintainers can start charging for feature requests. This might deter the rudeness.

I haven't used youtube-dl in a very long time. I was reading through the readme and it looks like it has changed (for the better) so much since I've last used it. Definitely a great project that fills a need that Youtube will never fill itself. It is sad to see it has slowed down.

I'm using the latest version (2020.07.28) just fine. I just downloaded a short video now:

  youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KiTZycVxgI
  [youtube] 4KiTZycVxgI: Downloading webpage
  [download] Destination: Why did Sweden Support the Vietcong (Short Animated 
  Documentary)-4KiTZycVxgI.mp4
  [download] 100% of 6.50MiB in 00:12

Gloryness is commenting that it doesn't work. It's only been a month... Huh? Is this a hype post or troll or something..

Possible the version in some repos is older/broken by a change YouTube made?

Manually installing and using the built-in updater normally gives a newer version, but then you have to do it yourself instead of via apt/whatever

Same, haven't had a single download issue in months, except for the odd connection failure where I needed two attempts.

It must be exhausting to maintain youtube-dl, what with youtube changing its api every so often. It would be a huge shame if we lost youtube-dl, though.

For example, I use cron jobs to run shell scripts that invoke youtube-dl to automate downloading youtube videos I save to various playlists.

I just ran youtube-dl and downloaded some videos just fine, so I'm not sure what Gloryness is referring to.

And it's not just a game of chasing YouTube. Many people aren't aware of this, but youtube-dl downloads from a rather large collection of video-hosting sites [1]

Some of those sites are stable, and have no problem with programs like youtube-dl, but some are constantly moving targets, and probably going out of their way to try and block youtube-dl. The thought of maintaining it, while facing a constant stream of "my favorite site broke, you MUST fix it now!" stresses me out, much less dealing with it.

1 = https://pastebin.com/7iVHkKG7

My impression from looking at the repo's Issues occasionally is that the maintainers seem to be permanently pissed-off and/or burned-out. They close so many issues as Duplicates but never link to what they are duplicates of, and ignore the inevitable requests for that information.

Ruthlessly closing issues seems like the only reasonable way to deal with the onslaught of low-quality issues being opened. Whenever YouTube breaks it, several issues are opened within 30 minutes, and filled with entitled, respectless complaints about it still not being fixed. I've contributed once or twice, but dealing with that issue tracker has always seemed like hell.

That's a factor but I don't think it's limited to attention deficit ingrates spamming new issues.

I've seen tons of perfectly reasonable comments along the lines of "This old issue got closed as a duplicate, but after searching the tracker, I cannot find the open issue, and the problem is still present. Can you tell me where it is?" that seem to get a flat 0% response rate.

I wouldn't blame them for being burned-out though. Presumably they aren't being financially compensated for maintaining it, and relative to the amount of use the project gets, there's probably not that much prestige either, because it's very "utilitarian".

The repository has 2,221 issues labeled as duplicates. If it takes the developers 30 seconds to close an issue, that's about 18 hours spent on handling bogus reports.

Delete the repo, reopen it, add your code, an 18 hour safe.

I have a youtube subscription, and although I can download and watch videos offline, I sometimes download kids stuff onto an mp3 player of my kid (Hoerbert, an offline mp3 player that looks like an oldschool radio). Also there are videos that I want to keep copies of (interviews with Luhmann for instance). So I appreciate this tool very much and hope it will be maintained forever :)

70k stars, 12k forks. I bet those forks have some good stuff in them.

Usually there are lots of forks on github because for some reason the Github UI has always led people to think that they should fork a repo even when they don't plan on contributing to it. This is also true of the "Fork me on Github" banner that has been around for years -- nearly all the people who click on it don't need to fork, they just want to leave a star or look at the README or something. Empirically I believe that for the majority of github users it is the case that the majority of "their repos" are forks with no added commits.

Yeah, "Fork" as brandished by GitHub Inc is really a misnomer. We already have a verb meaning to duplicate a git repo into your own space: Clone !!

So that button action in GitHub's web UI is really "(Cloud) Clone".

I can imagine it getting confusing for beginners: "so start off by cloning this repo... no not using github, using git"

That's true and I know from experience that when teaching people about git, the distinction between git/GitHub can be hard to grasp.

Personally though, I found it very helpful to understand that a GitHub repo is just another node on a graph, and isn't really a more grandiose thing than a node/repo that's on one's own hard drive.

the more the merrier :)

26466 issues? I would have burned-out long time ago...

I used this when I ran a lockdown family zoom quiz,to do music rounds. So much easier and reliable than some scrappy web based version

If maintainers have withdrawn from the project, may be it should be forked by those who are ready to contribute?

Is there a way on GitHub to filter by most active forks? All I get when I click on the Forks page is this warning: "Woah, this network is huge! We’re showing only some of this network’s repositories."

This would be valuable for a number of projects that have been abandoned or see infrequent updates while a fork (that usually has to be found by word of mouth or Google) is significantly more active.

I wish GitHub had a better interface to browse forks, right now it just displays a single list and requires you to search through individual forks to find any meaningful changes.

They also featured "fork this project" prominently for a while leading to many novice Git users forking projects unnecessarily, which pollutes the list of forks.

Agreed. That interface could be so much easier to navigate. Might be easier on a touch interface.

Even some simple ordering by recency of activity would be a vast improvement.

Or some 'momentum' to the scrolling of the tree.

It should, and it likely will be, since it is a popular piece of software. However, it is usually better to ask the maintainer to step down and continue his work without forking it. That saves everybody (distro packagers, users) a lot of time and effort.

> and continue his work without forking it

This is how you get in the same situation as uBlock.

Yes, in rare, flukish circumstances. Most of the time, there are no issues.

Are there any other examples?

I guess it is quite hard to get traction on a branch compared to take over the original project.

"17,727 commits"

It most feel quite futile to keep up with breaking changes from Youtube's side in the long run? Maybe they should be more liberal in what contributors they accept. Seems like two guys did the most commits.

that's not just youtube. youtube-dl supports a lot of sites.

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