Parallax github repository!
Seairth
Posts: 2,474
In case anyone missed it:
http://www.parallax.com/news/2014-11-06/parallax-starts-github-open-source-repository-our-developers
http://www.parallax.com/news/2014-11-06/parallax-starts-github-open-source-repository-our-developers
Comments
P1V is not in there yet but hopefully that's only a matter of time.
===Jac
is quietly on the list ?!
I've had a github account for a while but I have yet to use it. Time to watch Jessica's videos.
There is the idea that Parallax take ownership of the P8X32A_Emulation repository that I put up here: https://github.com/ZiCog/P8X32A_Emulation
That is still Chips original code with only white space fixes, TABs replaced with the correct spaces to make it look as Chip wrote it no matter what editor/viewer one has. Like on the github web pages themselves.
Plus the addition of a readme file and some documentation.
That repo has already been forked a few times and has a pull request on it so it would still be a good starting point for Parallax to take it over.
Chip has been too busy to act on this idea but following this announcement now would be a good idea.
Or perhaps Chip and Ken have decided against it and are planning their own thing.
Guess I am going to have to learn github - up till now I have resisted - "resistance if futile"
From what I understand in Ken's message, Jeff Martin is putting the ParallaxInc Github organization together. So I think you misunderstand about Ken and Chip changing their minds about taking over your repo. I'm pretty sure they're well aware of its existance, and Jeff is in the process of putting things together, and I expect he will contact you soon about taking over the repo.
https://github.com/parallaxinc is an organization, not a user ID; that's why the web page looks different from your own page and other people's pages. An organization on Github allows many people to work together on multiple projects. For example, earlier this year, the Heatsynclabs hacker space here in Mesa AZ organized the HackPHX event, and some people from Github.com were there to help organize the source code that the teams brought together, so they set up an Organization too, and made everyone part of it. That made it possible for everyone in the teams to check in code without having to deal with branching and pull requests. People outside an organization can still use the usual Fork model. Setting ParallaxInc up as an Organization is a great way to bring all the Parallax related projects together; it gives a sense of authority and approval of Github as the Place To Go for these projects, and still allows anyone to join in even in the unlikely event that others (even Parallax) might some day lose interest, or worse. And this is exactly what we would want from Parallax. Awesome!
===Jac
I am going to learn github.... up till now I have resisted....
Yes, this all looks very good. It's all happened since Chip contacted me last so I started to wonder what might happen next.
I wonder if this "reboot" was intentional or if Jeff Martin (or someone else who's working on Github for Parallax) wasn't aware that Heater's repo exists... It looks like many commits were done a long time ago.
I admit some bad decisions may have been made during our development but I don't know if I want to start over. It looks like the files in the Parallax repo aren't even de-tabbed yet.
===Jac
It's a shame because that repo has been forked and used by others already and it would have been good to pull that along. Now that is all lost and people will have to do all that again.
David,
For sure all changes should be acceptable to Chip. Or someone he really trusts I guess.
Contributions by others would come from other repos. That is how git works, you fork the upstream repo into your own new repo, make changes, then you can request that the upstream maintainers pull the changes. Which they may or may not do of course.
My changes were strictly limited to de-tabbing, which Chip seemed OK with, and adding some docs.
I guess I'll have to fork the new repo and try to get the de-tabbing pulled in.
Who is actually running that repo? The changes are already months old and as far as I know Chip has had nothing to do with git in that time.
I'm too tired this evening to think about any of that and tomorrow is a busy day. We'll see.
I agree that the Parallax repo should contain the code that replicates the P1 as accurately as possible. Anyone who wants to start with the code as Chip intended, should be able to just clone/fork the master branch from the Parallax repo.
But I also think that there are a few minor but important problems that should be fixed in the Parallax repo:
Furthermore, I think it would be a good idea to convert the AHDL files to Verilog so that beginners only have to learn one language. And apparently it also helps with the Xilinx port to have all files in Verilog.
I guess the bottom line is that the Parallax repo is the "official" one, making all other ones "derivatives". With Parallax' excellent reputation of working with users, it makes me think that they didn't intend to discard all our work and basically make it irrelevant. I probably wouldn't mind starting over; my work so far has been mostly reorganizing the existing code to make it easier for others to add features. I know there are various problems in addition to the ones mentioned above and it would be a good opportunity to do things right this time. But others have invested a lot of time in their own forks of the various branches produced by Heater, Mindrobots, myself and others, and may not be so willing to start over.
So, before I do a lot of work on the new Parallax repo, I'd like to know what their intentions are. What's the reason that there is now a second repo for the same code, with apparently more authoritative-ness because of the Parallax name? Was it a mistake and was Jeff (or whoever) unaware of Heater's depot, or was the creation of the new repo intentional? And if it was a mistake, is Parallax going to still take over Heater's repo, as he intended?
===Jac
I agree with all your bullet points.
Looking at it I think it's probably too late to revert this and use my repo. My version is basically the initial tarball from Chip de-tabbed. What I see on the Parallax repo has some changes already. At least support for the BeMicroCV micro has been added.
I think I'll try and find time to fork the Parallax repo and de-tab it again. Then make an issue and a pull request for that.
Note: For all those who fuss about tabs and indent levels, please browse the verilog code in the Parallax github. It displays as a mess. All I want is to have it display nicely, that is as Chip saw it when he wrote it.
As another bullet point, I don't like the new repo name "Propeller_1_Design". The word "design" is at least redundant. It's also not true. This is not what the Pi was built from !
I called mine "P8X32A_Emulation" in recognition of that but I was not overly happy about that name either.
I'm very new to using GitHub myself but I don't see any sign of the Eddie firmware on the Parallax repository. I have added my updates to my personal GitHub account.
Am I correct in assuming I need some sort of permission to add projects to the Parallax GitHub account and the proper course of action is to wait for Parallax to "Fork" or "Pull" or whatever one does to copy code from one repository to another.
BTW, Heater, you were right. GitHub does make sense even for a single developer. I like to think I had a pretty good version control system going but now that I'm getting used to GitHub, I can certainly see an advantage to using it.
What is the license on the Eddie code? Ken's statement that is was created for MS makes me worry you are not even allowed to redistribute.
I would image that only Parallax people will ever be able to add projects to their git hub account.
That is "account" though, which will have many git repositories within it. Potentially they might invite a trusted few to collaborate on those repos and be given access.
Generally though I would expect perhaps only one person at Parallax to be responsible for each repo and make use of the usual fork, update, pull request of the git work flow.
Glad to here you are getting on with git and github. It's worth it all just for the peace of mind of not having to worry about backups all the time. Or which machine happens to have the correct versions of dev code on it. The freedom to just hack on code as an experiment and not have to worry about trampling over the last know working version. And so on...
But he also provides the following instructions to whomever is modifying the Eddie code :
I think the statement:
Is to let us know why a MIT license wasn't already in the code.