The part that confuses me is how can multiple people work on overlapping bits of code at the same time, and the Git manager (or whatever you call it) just handles it all without breaking everything?
Comment on Open Source Developers Are Exhausted, Unpaid, and Ready to Walk Away
morrowind@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how open source works. I can’t imagine maintaining anything more than a tiny library that I can ignore six days of the week.
Also: open source relies on good jobs. You can only do it if you have a well paid low stress job with good hours. Those have been in short supply recently.
I think the free time covid gave, followed by the free time the layoffs gave, and AI have been patching / hiding the fact that the core model of open source is completely unsustainable in its current state.
Psythik@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
elephantium@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Roughly equal parts “git is clever” and “once in a while, someone has to take some time to figure it out”.
Say the code is split into two files. You and I both make changes, but you’re working on file A and I’m in file B. No problem!
Now we both make changes in file A. Sometimes Git can just “figure it out”, like if all your changes are in the beginning of the file, and all my changes are at the end.
But sometimes we both change the same section. Git can’t figure that part out, so one of us has to sit down and reconcile the changes. Sometimes this is pretty simple, other times…not so much.
Put it all together, and it works out pretty well most of the time.
Psythik@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Okay, so the answer basically is that you can’t have multiple people working on overlapping bits of code, not without someone sorting it out first.
elephantium@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, it’s fairly clever but not actually magical. Sometimes you have to go in and take a look.
Actually, the real magic is that it works out mostly ok most of the time. Much better than older systems where you would have to “check out” a file to work on it which would lock others out. I’ve heard older programmers talk about needing to go find someone who had a file checked out and have them check it back in to enable them to do some work.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I have a job like that, but I also have kids, so…