{"thread":{"id":"11335","subject":"The 6th edition of the msysGit Herald","startedAt":"2007-12-18T01:42:46Z","lastAt":"2007-12-18T01:42:46Z","messageCount":1,"participants":["Johannes Schindelin"],"isPatch":false,"patchVersion":null,"patchTotal":null},"messages":[{"id":"63544","messageId":"Pine.LNX.4.64.0712180141481.9446@racer.site","threadId":"11335","inReplyTo":null,"subject":"The 6th edition of the msysGit Herald","fromName":"Johannes Schindelin","fromEmail":"johannes.schindelin-mmb7mzphnfy@public.gmane.org","sentAt":"2007-12-18T01:42:46Z","receivedAt":"2007-12-18T01:42:46Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"johannes.schindelin-mmb7mzphnfy@public.gmane.org","avatar":null},"body":"\nGood morning git land!\n\nThis silent midnight is as good an occasion as any to offer to you the \n6th edition of the msysGit Herald, the not-quite-biweekly news letter \nto keep you informed about msysGit, the effort to bring one of the \nmost powerful Source Code Management systems to the poor souls stuck \nwith Windows. \n\nThese are the covered topics:\n\n\tGit Gui's fetch problems resolved\n\n\tvim colours improved\n\n\tGetting more hits via git.or.cz than Google\n\n\tUpdate to 1.5.4-rc0\n\n\tNew naming scheme: Git and msysGit\n\n\tWe busted the quota of Google Code\n\n\tmsysGit-netinstall: HTTP proxy and directories containing spaces\n\n\tNext things\n\n\n\nSo this not-quite bi-weekly newsletter took a little bit longer this \ntime. But only for the better! Seems like the installer really \nstabilises, as I hoped, and we really concentrated on some serious git \nwork. \n\nOh, and we got mentioned on kernel trap. For those who got the \nimpression from there that Git on Windows is not quite there yet: not \nonly is msysGit one of its own heaviest users, it is very much at the \ntechnical front of Git: we use submodules, and we promote Git Gui \nheavily. So there you have it: Git on Windows is already here. \n\nAlthough we call it beta. Just to cover our buttocks. \n\n\nGit Gui's fetch problems resolved\n=================================\n\nWe updated git to a version where git-fetch is a builtin, in the hope \nthat the issues with fetching were resolved (for those who do not \nfollow the Herald: when fetching within Git Gui, a window would pop up \nwith the remote refs, instead of redirecting this output to \ngit-fetch). \n\nAlas, it turns out that the implementation of spawnvpe() in Windows' \nruntime library leaves a lot to be desired. Amongst other issues, it \ndoes not automatically attach the child process to the same console as \nthe parent window, which gave us some grief. \n\nHannes Sixt finally broke down and reimplemented spawnvpe() as it \nshould have been (but was never fixed to). \n\nSince then, it is running like a charm. The only issue left is when \nyou access a remote host via ssh, and have to type in a password. We \nhave do not intercept that yet. There is a relatively low-hanging \nfruit waiting for somebody to harvest it. \n\n\nvim colours improved\n====================\n\nWe got a bug report that the colours in vim made a user blind ;-) \n\nWhile investigating, we found out that not only did we have a useless \n/etc/vimrc (the correct location is /share/vim/vimrc), but the code to \nshow nice colours for a dark background was already there, only at the \nwrong spot. \n\nWith that fixed, our user can recover, and open his eyes again to this \nlovely world we live in. \n\n\nGetting more hits via git.or.cz than Google\n===========================================\n\nSeems that the recent linking from the Git home page really changed \nthings in the statistics! While Google's search referalls dominated \nthe traffic sources earlier, 30% more users find our home page via \ngit.or.cz than via Google now, which might also mean that they are \nreferred to the Git home page first. ;-) \n\nWe also got some attention on November 19, when KernelTrap had a story \non us. \n\n\nUpdate to 1.5.4-rc0\n===================\n\nSince the last Herald, Hannes was very busy sending patches to Junio \nHamano, the maintainer of (non-MinGW) Git, in order to bring mingw.git \ncloser to git.git. In the midst of all those wonderful efforts, a \nfeature freeze was declared on git.git, to stabilise for 1.5.4. Such \nis life ;-) \n\nNevertheless, a few patches made it in, and Hannes made quite a few \nmore cleanups, such as a rework of the environment variable handling \n(when you setenv() on Windows, references you got earlier via getenv() \nare now stale), or avoiding dup()s which confused Windows -- in the \ncommit messages, this issue is known as the \"dup dance\". \n\nAt the same time, Steffen Prohaska worked on bringing 4msysgit.git \ncloser to mingw.git ;-) \n\nThe fallout of these endeavours is that we are not only much closer to \nmingw.git, but we are in fact pretty close to the current prerelease \nof Git -- 1.5.4-rc0! \n\nTogether with the usability improvements in the installer, such as \ninstalling shortcuts for all users when installing as administrator, \nor the integration of the release notes into the installer, I am \npretty happy with the state of the project. \n\n\nNew naming scheme: Git and msysGit\n==================================\n\nWhen taking the first steps of \"Git on MSys\", there was only one \npretty large zip file, containing the development environment to \ncompile git, along with a checkout of mingw.git. \n\nSince then, we decided that we wanted installers. Three of them. \n\nThe final goal is a Git installer, meant for the end user. \n\nTo attract developers to that end, we also wanted to have two \ninstallers for the development environment: a small one, containing \nbarely enough of Git and MSys to fetch and checkout the master branch \nof the development environment's repository, and the master branch of \nour fork of mingw.git (and recently, we got another submodule for the \ndocumentation). And a big installer, which does not clone anything, \nbut is an all-in-one package of the development environment, not even \nsetting up git remotes -- basically the big zip we had during the \nfirst day, turned into an installer. \n\nAs I am pretty bad with British slang names, I could not think of any \nreally good names, and we ended up with \"WinGit\" (from \"to wing it\") \nfor the Git installer, \"GitMe\" for the net installer of the \ndevelopment environment, and \"msysGit\" for the full installer. \n\nThat was confusing. \n\nSteffen pointed out that we should thrive for the crown of Git on \nWindows, leaving cygwin's Git behind, and therefore our Git installer \nshould really be called \"Git\". \n\nAlso, since the other two installers are in fact just two different \nways to obtain the development environment, they should share the same \nname, \"msysGit\", with one being the net installer and the other the \nfull installer. \n\nSo, these are the downloads we offer: Git, msysGit-netinstall and \nmsysGit-fullinstall. \n\nBut maybe we decide to rename the latter two to Git-Dev-netinstall and \nGit-Dev-full some day... we'll see. \n\n\nWe busted the quota of Google Code\n==================================\n\nA mere 5 months after starting the project page \nhttp://msysgit.googlecode.com/ we reached the (default) quota of \n100MB. We used up about 7-9 megabytes for each release of the Git \ninstaller, and the full msysGit installer weighs in with a 14 \nmegabytes. \n\nWhen Dmitry Kakurin suggested to get some project hosting, back in \nJuly, my first address was sourceforge. However, they dragged their \nfeet (and our project was really moving along at a breathtaking pace, \nback then) so we ended up using Google Code's friendly hosting service \ninstead. \n\nAlready it became quite clear that we'd eventually need more quota, \nbut we were being told that we would get more when we needed it. That \npoint was reached on Friday, 14th of December, when Steffen was unable \nto upload the current preview due to space constraints. \n\nWhen I found the right spot to ask (in case you wonder, it was not the \nemail address code-hosting-hpIqsD4AKlfQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org, as suggested by the Google Code \nFAQ, but the Project Hosting discussion group at \nhttp://groups.google.com/group/google-code-hosting?lnk=gschg), things \nwent smoothly and we now have a quota of 200MB. See you in 5 months, \nGoogle ;-) \n\n\nmsysGit-netinstall: HTTP proxy and directories containing spaces\n================================================================\n\nA long standing bug in msysGit-netinstall (then known as GitMe) was \nfixed quite some time ago, but I never got around to wrap up new \ninstallers: If you installed msysGit into a directory containing \nspaces, it would not be able to finish the installation. \n\nAnother bug(let) was that we did not have any method to specify an \nHTTP proxy in the net installer. \n\nThis was the reason, probably, that the net installer was \nsubstantially less popular (2817 downloads) than the full installer \n(4306 downloads), despite the former being featured on the main page. \n\nWith both bugs fixed in both msysGit installers -- also updated to the \nsame state as the Git installer -- we lay the old installers, \nGitMe-0.4.2 and msysGit-0.6, to rest. Requiescant in pace. \n\n\nNext things\n===========\n\nThe commands git-svn and git-cvsimport had to take a backseat while \nmore visible _Git_ issues were being taken care of. But postponed is \nnot abandoned, so they will both see some attention again soon. \n\nMy pet project, git-cheetah, should also get integrated as a submodule \nof msysgit.git. It is a lightweight Explorer extension a la \nTortoiseCVS, and given enough people working on it, it should be able \nto kick rear ends pretty quickly. \n\nRxvt. Ah, so long ago, I abandoned hope that this would be fixed \neventually (for one, git-log is not able to spawn a pager, and thus \nthe history just whizzes by). So we use cmd instead. \n\nIt is no secret that cmd (or the console window it opens) has pretty \nannoying restrictions (such as no proper multi-line selections, no \n_real_ resizing support, and you have to use the mouse to scroll \nback). But with the work we did to recompile Perl for MSys, it should \nbecome easier to tackle Rxvt. Or maybe we'll just include Xming \ninstead, a very small and lean rootless X11 server for MinGW. \n"}]}