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Comment by antimora | Hacker News Reader

Though I use Linux on daily basis, I see the source code for the first time.

That is one important contribution of Github, Bitbucket, Gitorious etc. to the open source world: the ability to browse a project's code instantly or near-instantly. Most SVN or CVS-based systems have an outdated, painful Web interface, buried under a thousand menus - assuming the project even sets one up to begin with. Even when you have a program installed on your computer, it's easier to browse the code on Github.

There was some article on the intertubes about how Github panders to devs, while Sourceforge panders to distributers.

I found the launchpad bzr code browser not to bad. Launchpad is also more project based then code based. The thing is that sourceforge and launchpad try to give you an overview of the project first while github show the code and a readme and maybe some wiki pages.

You might be thinking of Zed Shaw's article "Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder": http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1299555462.html

Yep, that's it.

The one thing I would disagree with is that Github's issue tracking still needs some serious love (although it has improved significantly since launch).

Mainly I would say that it works great for projects with relatively few contributors (like most Ruby gems), but seems to fall apart on very large projects (like Rails, who uses Lighthouse for issue tracking). Everything else about Github is amazing, though.

Rails no longer uses lighthouse. They've been using GH issue for months.

Ah oops, it's been a little while since I jumped in there. Guess that's a good sign I need to find something to fix :)

I think Github's issue tracker is the best around, now that search actually works. Very lightweight, and the integration with commits and pull requests is really nice.

dhh doesn't sound like he was ever a fan of Lighthouse: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/63366853636009985

I would use it if it allowed groups to keep all of their issues in one place. Our organization has 20+ repos, so having 20+ bug trackers is pretty dumb. If they make a toplevel issue tracker, I think we'd switch to it.

Most Java/Commercial has painful web interface. But smart people are using trac (Webkit, for example) or develop their own solution inspired by trac - code.google.com =)

Once again: trac is REALLY GOOD and no other project can compete for clarity and all other words form that UX crap. ^_^

Yeah...I've programmed Trac internals. The Trac code is an absolute nightmare to explore - very little API documentation, and they ship their own poorly-documented Web framework in Trac, not to mention the craziness that is the Zope component architecture. The UI's really not that great either - it's mostly the Trac derivatives like Redmine and Google Code that actually look nice.

Also, what does Webkit have to do with Trac?

http://trac.webkit.org/

Maybe if you use TextMate.

Emacs. Tag search. Problem: solved.

You poor poor soul!

My life has been infinitely enriched by the countless hours I've spent, many a dark night, in /usr/src/linux[1], with "Midnight Commander".

[1] A symlink, always a symlink.

Why do you make a specific point of the symlink?

Always a good idea to have things you build from source outside your /usr/src tree, and also named descriptively. Not just for stuff you build from source, but also other packages you admin yourself outside the distro package management (JDK comes to mind.)

I can think of a few reasons to build elsewhere like it being easier to do as a non-root user, and so you don't fill a system drive with experimentation, but I'm not quite sure I know specifically why you're saying so.

As for descriptive names, I agree.

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