Years ago I got into the habit of making an empty commit whenever I create a new git repository:

$ git init
$ git commit --allow-empty -m "initial, empty commit"

Without such a commit, it's harder to make certain kinds of changes to the repository, such as squashing the first few commits¹ and rewriting the whole history of a repository, for example when changing licenses or open-sourcing for the first time.

Having an initial, empty commit serves a similar purpose to Mercurial's null commit, Pijul's identity element, and Jujutsu's root commit.

Footnote:

¹: the link explains how to retrospectively add an empty commit to the start of a repository

#git

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underlap

2024-02-17 10:47:22

writefreely

What am I up to "now"?

(“Now” is in quotes as it depends on when I last remembered to update this page.)

Software

I'm prototyping multiplexing for servo/ipc-channel as a possible solution to the problem of it exhausting available file descriptors. I'm currently working out a design for managing the lifecycle of subchannel endpoints when they are transmitted over another subchannel.

Reading

I'm well into Cixin Liu's “The Three-Body Problem”. Not sure if the plot is really going to work yet.

See books for some of my past reads.

Listening

I'm enjoying Cal Newport's Deep Questions podcast. I occasionally listen to the Inspired podcast by Simon Guillebaud, which is an encouraging antidote to the current depressing themes dominating the news.

Exercise

To get back into running I'm on week 7 of the Couch to 5K app. I first used this app 15 years ago.

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The Deep Life by Cal Newport : Podcasts

TDL is the online home of the Deep Life Movement, which argues for the importance of focus in a world increasingly deluged by distraction.

^{The Deep Life Podcast by Cal Newport}

gource is one of my favourite programs. It produces a video animation of how a source code repository evolved and who worked on it. But, even with filenames and users hidden, the output is often beautiful and fascinating.

The initial phase of coding, even if it starts with a “dump” of existing code into version control, often shows intense rework and the creation of multiple directory structures. Major refactorings appear as explosions of global activity. The evolution slows down dramatically as a project enters its maintenance phase and less energy is expended.

For projects I've worked on, the explosive phases are those in which the most development effort was expended and when there was perhaps the most innovation and excitement.

Each of the examples below provides a screenshot of the animation and a link to download the video.

Cloud Foundry Java Client

This project provided a Java client for the Cloud Foundry API. It was led by Ben Hale who set and maintained an extremely high level of coding standards and uniformity. The code itself was a fascinating application of Project Reactor in the functional reactive programming style. I have often described the code as “crystalline” in structure.

Download the animation (537 MB).

systemd

A much larger project is the systemd init system for Linux. I know nothing about the internals of systemd, but the number of contributors and the scale of what appears to be refactoring at various points in the project are staggering.

Download the animation (476 MB).

Glasgow Haskell compiler

GHC is another long-standing, mega-project whose internals I know little about. However, there are clearly delineated sections of code, such as runtime library, backend, and test cases which continue to evolve at pace in the animation. This is due in part to the GHC community's focus on research and consequent avoidance of strict backward compatibility.

Download the animation (2.7 GB). Since it is particularly massive, you may prefer to recreate the animation yourself (see below).

Bindgen

rust-bindgen generates Rust FFI bindings to C/C++ code. I contributed a small patch to this code when I was developing a JVMTI agent in Rust and I was struck by the beauty and sophistication of the code. I am grateful to Nick Fitzgerald for coaching me through the development of the patch.

Download the animation (549 MB). This time I didn't hide the filenames as this gives a better understanding of the structure (including a substantial test suite).

Image relocation

image-relocation is a fork of a small project I initially developed with contributions from a few others. It's a utility for copying Docker and OCI images. After the initial development phase it was maintained by a couple of others.

Download the animation (231 MB). I didn't hide anything as the number of files and directories is modest and it shows the handover to maintainers and the fork.

Eclipse Virgo

Finally, Eclipse Virgo is a modular server runtime based on OSGi. The fireworks here are dramatic and, especially for those of us who worked on the project, the fine structure is fascinating.

Download the animation (479 MB).

Create your own

Once you've installed gource, depending on your platform, it's often possible to view an animation by cloning a repository and running gource from inside the cloned directory.

The videos above were produced on Linux using variations of the following command line:

gource --hide dirnames,files,users -s 0.01 -o - | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 gource.mp4

#SoftwareDevelopment #git

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underlap

2024-02-17 08:28:38

writefreely

Contact

You are warmly welcomed to drop me a line or comment on a post by email, by using the comment facility at the bottom of each post, or by searching for or mentioning @mastodon@underlap.org on Mastodon (except when I'm fasting from social media!). You might even want to sign the guest book.

Also, please feel free to send me suggestions for topics you'd like me to write about.

And don't be shy. I'm delighted when people correct my spelling or grammar. I find it helpful when people express contrary views. Or if you just want to say “hello”, that'd be great.

Looking forward to hearing from you, Glyn

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So you want to fight fascism and make a difference right now? Do this:

Join Codeberg e.V. – become part of the organisation; part of the resistance – and actively support this valuable and ethical EU-based anti-fascist¹ git hosting alternative that’s under attack by fascists as we speak:

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Volunteer and/or donate if you can.

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#Codeberg #CodebergUnderAttack #SupportCodeberg #antifascist #EU #european #FOSS #freeSoftware #git #hosting #fediverse #mastodon #community #callToAction