It'd be nice if these sort of links on github went to a nice friendly "What the hell is Ack?" page. With a nice summary of the project etc. Like in the big green "Sign up to github" box maybe? So people can see at a glance what the project is about.
I know there's a README after some scrolling, but it's not really obvious. There's a load of hex strings which seem a bit premature, and a source list which again assumes I know what the project is all about...
I just thought in this case the root of the project might have made more sense. Maybe they should put an excerpt from the README under the standard project blurb with name, homepage and clone url.
That's not much better for me, still half a page of 'stuff' before the README starts :)
I didn't mean to derail the thread though, but it's always irritated me about github links. I click on one and have no clue what the hell the project is.
/me is off to checkout ack (Haven't used it before, and looks useful).
You just scroll half a screen down and you get a nice
> README
>
> ack is a grep-like tool tailored to working with large trees of source code.
Github is about code first and foremost. So it makes sense to have the code up front and center. Projects who want doc on github will fill in the wiki and link to that instead of the tree.
I've been using Ack tons, love it. However, I don't like the --notext default. I find that I specify --text almost every time. Just wanted to give everyone a headsup that this is the case: I introduced some bugs in my app when I missed a whole bunch of .txt templates for plain text email variants.
Ah, but ack supports an options file, so you can actually change your own defaults. Consider adding "--text" to "$HOME/.ackrc". In case you want more, specify just one option per line.
Thanks for the tip. I assumed that this existed, but hadn't gotten around to looking for it yet. My point, however, was to confirm that defaults do, in fact, matter :-)
I'm new to github. When I go to download it ("Downloads" tab at github) and click "latest" "tgz"; why do I get "petdance-ack-$extremely_long_number.tar.gz" instead of "ack-1.9.0.tar.gz"?
Same thing happens if I click the curvy-cornered "download" button with the little green downward-pointing arrow.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 59.9 ms ] threadI know there's a README after some scrolling, but it's not really obvious. There's a load of hex strings which seem a bit premature, and a source list which again assumes I know what the project is all about...
I kinda prefer how google code shows things :/
eg http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/
I just thought in this case the root of the project might have made more sense. Maybe they should put an excerpt from the README under the standard project blurb with name, homepage and clone url.
I didn't mean to derail the thread though, but it's always irritated me about github links. I click on one and have no clue what the hell the project is.
/me is off to checkout ack (Haven't used it before, and looks useful).
> README > > ack is a grep-like tool tailored to working with large trees of source code.
Github is about code first and foremost. So it makes sense to have the code up front and center. Projects who want doc on github will fill in the wiki and link to that instead of the tree.
I would love to quote this on the betterthangrep.com page. Would you please drop me a line at andy@petdance.com and give me your name and an OK?
It was built with programmers in mind.
Same thing happens if I click the curvy-cornered "download" button with the little green downward-pointing arrow.