Free Printed Copies of "Version Control by Example" | Hacker News Reader

Free Printed Copies of "Version Control by Example"

ericsink.com

144 pointsrw14041 comments

What a great idea. Will future updates be available as well? Perhaps in a DVCS for easy access?

I'd be a happy man if ALL tech books lived in a DVCS. Users could fork it, push updates, fixes, etc. and the author could integrate changes as they see fit. No more searching for errata URLs, simply update your repository.

I'd even pay for this.

A great example of where this idea could be really useful is with Linux books like 'Linux Device Drivers', or 'Understanding the Linux Kernel'. These books are often out of date at the time they're published. I'd happily pay for access to them in a repository somewhere.

This is not unlike how the Pragmatic Bookshelf (http://pragprog.com/)works today with the exception that you have to wait for new book versions to become available, then regenerate them in your e-version format of choice. It'd be much more useful if the community of users could contribute back to the book source repository at their leisure.

There are these things called wikis... some books are even published that way.

I'd love to request a copy, but the District of Columbia is not an option in the state field. I know we're not technically a state, but we're still people!

I actually have this problem more often than I should. It is especially painful when I'm trying to pay for a product. Tip to all web developers: Make sure DC is an option in your signup/order forms.

I just wanted to make sure none of those crooks in Congress got a free copy of my book, but I keep forgetting that other people live there too.

:-)

Seriously, sorry for the oversight. We'll fix this.

Why you are not offering a paid eBook format? I am sure people would like to pay you for the eBook version.

> Heck, people often pay more per click on AdWords than it costs to print and ship a book.

Wow. Such a great way to spend money, and I think it would get them some great ROI.

(They are launching their new SCM veracity.)

I certainly didn't know it existed until now (though I was aware of the book in no-trees-were-harmed form) and we are currently assessing our ongoing needs regarding version control (it works, but we really need to move onto something more modern at some point soon), so they've at least bought a little mindshare here, and I doubt we are at all unique in that regard.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out for them if we get a follow-up article further down the line.

Would be great if you guys would report back with a ROI type report on this pr stunt. Wish you all the best!

I reside in India. My request went through without a hitch (Opera11.50/Linux).

I think this is great idea for a version control book. I work in a dual-vcs environment (Hg, git - Work, personal)

Really great idea. I checked out the ToC before ordering and I like the way it offers a comparison of the major existing version control systems and then includes in the comparison at the end the new version control system. So basically it's useful to anyone who is thinking about moving to a new VCS and "happens to mention" the author's VCS. I'd pay for that any day, but instead I'll just recommend the book to everybody I know... which is probably what they want...

I picked up a copy of this book at OSCON a few weeks ago. It's well-written, humorous, and a great overview of Mercurial and Git and a good introduction to Veracity.

If you have been using Mercurial or Git for a while, there won't be much new in here, but it is an enjoyable and quick read. And it could come in handy for converting those holdouts on your team still using Subversion (or, like a few people I work with, no version control at all!).

Fantastic! Thanks for doing this because some of our devs barely use SVN in my office and it would be great if they became more aware of the benefits of version control. I've used git on previous projects and love the distributed model, hopefully having this as a good reading option in our office will help improve us all.

Smart Bear does the same thing: http://smartbear.com/best-kept-secrets-of-peer-code-review/ - I received a free (paper) book after attending a session about peer code review.

I still haven't read the book, but that's a whole different discussion.

My request went through (Philippines) :) I hope it comes. I'd like to show my workmates the beauty of version control and what they're missing.

There's a free online version (also PDF) http://www.ericsink.com/vcbe/index.html

It's worth mentioning that you can also read the book for free online: http://www.ericsink.com/vcbe/index.html

Take a look and decide if it's something you like to have in paper form.

Since I cannot control-F a book, I'll save a tree and stick with the PDF.

Looks like an interesting book. Were you taken to another page when clicking "Request a book"? For me, the page was reloaded and my answers to questions 1-8 were deselected.

I got taken to a page saying:

"Thank you for requesting a copy of "Version Control by Example".

"Before your request can be processed, you will need to verify your email address. You will be receiving an email from us shortly with instructions to verify your request."

Was that surprising ?

Well the person who I replied to said he got no confirmation and the form just reloaded, so I told him that he should see a confirmation page and showed him what to expect. Did you not bother reading the comment I was replying to?

Same has happened to me, no matter what options I fill in, or whichever browser, it just redirects me back to the same page with the radio buttons deselected. Maybe it doesn't like the UK?

Same thing happening here, I'm in Canada though.

EDIT: Worked when I used IE8 though. I was using FF5 on WinXP before. May just be a coincidence.

Same happened to me, don't want to Spam and resubmit but some feedback on whether form submission was successful wouldn't go amiss!

If you resubmit and your first submission worked, it will tell you (and let you proceed).

I was surprised by the repeated page, too, but I just thought it was my mobile browser. Guess not.

Unfortunately the same thing is happening for me.

I submitted twice using different browsers and both times the form came back empty except for the address. No sign of any error or missing fields. The PDF will be then.

I had the same thing happen to me just now. Win 7 with Firefox 5.0.

Even after submitting again with the same info filled in, it comes back the same way. I don't get a confirmation. I'm behind a corporate proxy, if that might cause any issues (ie: multiple people at my company all asking for the book may look like lots of requests from the same IP).

I am not behind a proxy.

Apologies to folks having difficulty. Book requests are still coming in, so the system is definitely operational. We'll be investigating the problems this morning. For now, my only guess is that it is related to the load, so I suggest you keep trying.

Also, under question 2), one has to double-click the textbox following the "Other" choice, in order to give the textbox focus and gain a working insertion point.

You should give the form a good going over. It starts to, erm, not be confidence inspiring.

Nonetheless, looking forward to having a look. I decided to request a dead-tree version as sometimes having one at hand allows me to pay attention at times I otherwise wouldn't.

"my only guess is that it is related to the load, so I suggest you keep trying."

If it's related to load, then a better suggestion might be to keep trying, but later. :)

I'm reading the pdf now, so far so good. Thanks.

Doesn't seem to work, no matter which browser I use. Maybe it doesn't like UK addresses?

It didn't seem to complain with my (UK) address, and I got the "confirm your email address" mail through and that link worked fine. This was one or two hours ago though, so there may be a new bug or the page (or the DB behind it) may be under sudden load if the link has hit high volume sites like slashdot.

I'd report it to them if I were you, though please make the bug report much more detailed than "it didn't work"...

Don't worry, I filed an extensive bug report, like a true-hacker-style.

There is no "hacker style" to filing a good bug report. But I have a bee in my bonnet about bad ones - I often get the equivalent of dropping a car off at the garage for repair with just a note that "it makes a noise".

HAHA!

I just ordered one on Chrome (Win) in the UK.

The form seems to be failing to load. Did we break it?

firefox on XP here, and I couldn't submit the form either.

The author donated an entire box (!) of this book to our students. The book itself is well-written, which is surprising considering that it appears aimed at selling people on Veracity. But, to be fair, after comparing Veracity to Perforce, I am sold on Veracity too. :3

Even if you don't care about enterprisy VCS, this book covers three established community-based VCSes in a really great way. Get a copy, put it on your shelf, give it a read.

Awesome! Just ordered a copy.

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