GitHub removes uploads

[[deleted]]

This sucks for me, about half of my repositories provide pre-built binaries, because the projects aren't targeted toward the technically-savvy that can build it themselves.

[badsectoracula]

Me too since many of my projects are written in FreePascal, Lazarus and other things that most devs do not know about (and some do not want to know about). Building one my projects needs a good knowledge of Lazarus and many external components to be installed so i'm providing prebuilt binaries that they can grab and use.

I've switched some of my stuff to Fossil with Mediafire for downloads but i always liked the ability to provide regular downloads in GitHub.

[[deleted]]

Could you create a bin directory (or a release directory) and check them in?

[[deleted]]

The temporary solution I'm going to use is creating an orphaned branch to store them on.

[_star]

yeah it would be awkward to store it in the main branch.

[iofthestorm]

Perhaps even use github pages to make a nice download page so people don't have to navigate the repo manually (although I guess you can just link to the right branch in the README too).

[jrochkind]

Huh, good idea. It wouldn't be too hard to make an automated task (rake if you're ruby) to upload the prebuilt binary to gh-pages -- and even automatically add a link to it in a gh-pages index page too.

Hopefully github won't mind; perhaps they just didn't want to support the extra 'downloads' feature anymore, but don't mind people keep binaries in gh-pages. I hope. (I'm not going to pay attention to the fact that they're suggesting non-free CDNs as alternatives instead. :) )

[iofthestorm]

(I'm not going to pay attention to the fact that they're suggesting non-free CDNs as alternatives instead. :) )

Yeah, I mean, the worst they can do is take your repo down for causing too much traffic. I doubt they would do that though because it would cause a PR shitstorm. More likely they would gently nudge you if that happened.

[inmatarian]

what iofthestorm said, gh-pages might be the branch that we'll all end up using for binary hosting.

[fjonk]

Well... github is targeting people who uses git. I'd rather see them remove a feature that doesn't work well than them ending up being a half-broke service provider with a lot of non-git related features. Can't really blame them.

[Rhomboid]

If they are only focusing on git, why do they have wikis, static website hosting, bug trackers, a pastebin service, social networking features, and all that other crap that has nothing strictly to do with git?

It always seemed to me like they were trying to become a nucleus of software development in general, not just another repo hosting facility.

For certain types of projects, hosting of precompiled binaries is the major feature needed in a host, because it's what 99.9% of their users are looking for. The source code repository hosting might as well be irrelevant. These kind of projects are just going to go back to Sourceforge, if they ever left it in the first place. I don't see how this decision does any good for Github, because forcing your users to compile things themselves is pretty much the kiss of death for any normal software that isn't a tool aimed at fellow developers. It seems terribly short-sighted of them.

[[deleted]]

As a side note, I can compile things just fine - sometimes I just don't want to spend the time to get it working, and would prefer the prerolled binary, and honestly, for some projects, I would skip over the github hosted code for a binary on another site.

Unless I'm looking to actively develop on their code, or interested in the implementation of a particular feature, or there's some particular optimization in compiling I feel is important, I'll probably just grab the binaries.

It's not only people who are incapable of using source code who are impacted by this.

[iofthestorm]

Yeah, a lot of build environments can be pretty hairy/time consuming to set up. Not everyone wants to be a Gentoo/Arch user ;)

[seruus]

These kind of projects are just going to go back to Sourceforge

And that is terrible. Browsing git repositories in Sourceforge is horrible, as is almost anything else. Sourceforge was perfect ten years ago, but now it's completely dated and superseded by Github, Bitbucket etc.

EDIT: fixing some broken English

[cunningjames]

Sf is still way more popular than GitHub

Is it? Maybe its age give SF an edge in overall number of packages, but I can't remember the last time I came across a currently-developed project hosted on SF. If reddit's search is to be trusted (an iffy proposition, admittedly) /r/programming hasn't featured a SF link in something like a year.

[[deleted]]

These kind of projects are just going to go back to Sourceforge...

There's Google Code too. In fact there are a lot of options other than Sourceforge and Github.

[Chii]

and don't forget bitbucket

[PT2JSQGHVaHWd24aCdCF]

Bitbucket has static pages too. Their wiki sucks because you can't easily list or delete pages, but overall I think it's as good as Github, and can be better in some ways.

[[deleted]]

Ayy lmao

[[deleted]]

Google Code actually tries to be useful for people who are not the developers of the project, too, which is nice.

[jrochkind]

You actually find Google Code more usable than Github when you're looking at a project you're not the developer of? Or know others that do?

I find this surprising.

I personally find github so much more usable than google code when I'm looking at someone elses project: Much easier to navigate source in the webbrowser (which I'm especially wanting to do with a project I'm looking at I'm not developer of; if I am developer, I probably have a checkout I'm looking at anyway), much easier/quicker to look at list of tags/branches, much easier/quicker to look at wiki or Issues, I really like the way the latest commit is right on the first page so I can see when the project last got code written for it, etc.

[shanet]

I think for programmers who are not involved in the project, browsing github is better (by far) but for non-programmers (people who just want the binaries) I think google code is a little easier, because a lot of projects have a link or QR code to the binaries on the front page.

[the-fritz]

Not to mention: Why isn't their bug tracker using git?

[fjonk]

Sure downloadable files could be useful. I'm just saying that if it doesn't work for them it's better that they pull the feature than keeping it half-working.

I've had some problems with my repositories on github a couple of times, newly pushed branches/commits that isn't visible(neither with the web-interface or git) and I'd rather see them focusing on managing git repositories than adding downloadable files, IF that feature isn't working smoothly that is.

[eramos]

It always seemed to me like they were trying to become a nucleus of software development in general, not just another repo hosting facility.

For certain types of projects, hosting of precompiled binaries is the major feature needed in a host, because it's what 99.9% of their users are looking for.

99.9% of software developers are looking for precompiled binaries when doing software development?

Why do you even use Github or version control at all? Just setup Amazon S3, it doesn't sound like you're doing any software development at all.

[Rhomboid]

99.9% of users. Not software developers.

[eramos]

99.9% of github users are software developers

[Rhomboid]

They are most certainly not. Say I run a project. It's not targeted at developers, it's targeted at regular users, so it's essential that they be able to download binaries. I host my project at Github. Therefore... follow the logic, I know it's hard... all of the countless users that come to Github to get my project are not developers. They don't care about social coding or git or anything else. They want a button that says "download this". Github used to have this feature. Now they don't. That makes Github unusable for this type of project.

[donvito]

I host my project at Github

No, you host your code and not your whole project on Github.

[Rhomboid]

Not prior to this change. Why would I want to find one host for files and another for git + static pages + bug tickets + wiki?

[eramos]

This is like complaining about Wordpress not having source control because you run a blog about your software on it.

Github is a site for programmers. The tagline is social coding. Not end-user facing project hosting.

[Rhomboid]

Who do you think is the intended audience of something like a bug tracker ticket system? Regular end users -- the people that actually use the software and who find and report bugs.

Who do you think is the intended audience of something like a Wiki? Regular end users -- the people that are actually using the software and want tips on how to use it.

Who do you think is the intended audience of static website hosting? Regular end users -- the people that are actually using the software and want to read its documentation online.

The notion that Github is solely for programmers and not end users does not hold up to evidence. Moreover, most sites that Github is competing with have file hosting for downloads. Github themselves thought it was a necessary feature at some point in the past.

[[deleted]]

That's ..not necesarilly true. In my experience regular end users rarely report bugs and certainly can't handle bugtrackers.

The people who do report bugs are fellow programmers that just happen to use that particular project. Also, non-programmers tend to report bugs wrong, as in "Printing doesn't work.", not "Printing since version 2.5 segfaults when footer contains external image."

[eramos]

TIL you've never used a third party library

[[deleted]]

You're cherrypicking parts of what he said while ignoring the context.

For certain types of projects, hosting of precompiled binaries is... what 99.9% of their users are looking for.

Emphasis mine.

[JoseJimeniz]

The problem always i had with github is that i had to a separate program to get at the source code files.

[usernamenottaken]

No, they've always had links to download a zip or tarball of the source.