Are the jcl and jvcl libraries still alive?

[Davide Angeli 44]

Hi all! 

 

I have always been using JCL/JVCL libraries in my Win32/64 VCL applications.

 

Is anyone still keeping them alive? I opened some reports in the JEDI Issue tracker (also posting the possible solutions) but with desolation I see that in the last few months there are only new error reports and no one taking them in charge. 

 

[dummzeuch 1517]

Nobody is looking at the issue tracker any more, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the admin sccount for it has been lost.

But on the Github page things seem to be not quite so dead.

Edited July 15, 2022 by dummzeuch

[Davide Angeli 44]

uhm... ok good to hear that issue tracker is abandoned... so issues would be better to post directly on github.

 

JCL seems quite static also on github. Just an example, till last year I was using JclSysInfo to get Windows version and it was very quick on updates but now at all there is no Win 2022 server recognition so I switched on standard Delphi functions.

 

[dummzeuch 1517]

I'm not an active JEDI  member either. I stopped contributing - as little as I did - when they switched do Github. Not sure how many active people are left in that project.

[Dave Nottage 563]

5 hours ago, Davide Angeli said:

JCL seems quite static also on github.

Relatively speaking, yes. A quick glance reveals that someone called todaysoftware committed a change last month. Same goes for JVCL - the last commit there was in April by obones.

[Davide Angeli 44]

On 7/15/2022 at 7:11 PM, dummzeuch said:

I'm not an active JEDI  member either. I stopped contributing - as little as I did - when they switched do Github. Not sure how many active people are left in that project.

I never used Github to contribute but it seems not so immediate to use... I want to create a pull request to post a couple of corrections on a jcl unit but I don't understand if I have to fork the project and then create the pull request from fork or if I could directly create a new branch on my local master and push it in same way (I m using SmartGit on local git repositories)...

[Anders Melander 1815]

3 minutes ago, Davide Angeli said:

I want to create a pull request to post a couple of corrections on a jcl unit but I don't understand if I have to fork the project and then create the pull request from fork or if I could directly create a new branch on my local master and push it in same way (I m using SmartGit on local git repositories)...

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a branch on your fork.
3. Apply the changes to your branch.
4. Push the changes to your fork.
5. Create a pull request to have your branch merged into the original repository.

[dummzeuch 1517]

54 minutes ago, Davide Angeli said:

I never used Github to contribute but it seems not so immediate to use..

That's exactly why I stopped contributing. Before the project moved to Github I had write access to the svn repository and could simply commit my changes, so for me the process has become much more complicated.

 

Anders Melander has summed up the process on Github nicely.

[Vincent Parrett 763]

16 hours ago, dummzeuch said:

Anders Melander has summed up the process on Github nicely.

Why is this too complicated for people? Pull requests make a lot more sense for open source projects, as they make doing code reviews etc simple - where as with direct commit access there is always more risk that something get's broken, or that the committer takes the project in a different direction than what the project owner wants. 

 

I always tell people, before contributing to a project

 

1) create an issue and discuss with the other contributors/owners - then when everyone is on the same page

2) create a pull request
3) owner and other contributors review and approve/merge.

 

Usually after step 1,  if I do not have the time to implement it myself, I tag the issue as "PR Invited" meaning the issue is well understood and deemed worthy of implementation - and a PR that implements the feature/fix etc will have a good chance of being accepted.

 

Sadly most of the time people ask/want but are not prepared to help/contribute. Github is not the barrier. 

Edited July 19, 2022 by Vincent Parrett

[Davide Angeli 44]

2 hours ago, Vincent Parrett said:

Why is this too complicated for people?

Summurized in few words like Anders do it seems not really complicated. I will try it.

 

3 hours ago, Vincent Parrett said:

Pull requests make a lot more sense for open source projects,

I think you are right. In the specific case, the problem seems that there is no one who pulls the strings, so the risk is having dozens of pull requests that will never be integrated.

 

3 hours ago, Vincent Parrett said:

1) create an issue and discuss with the other contributors/owners - then when everyone is on the same page

It is diffcult to do when you have the perception that no contributors has time to dedicate like in this case...

 

[Vincent Parrett 763]

49 minutes ago, Davide Angeli said:

It is diffcult to do when you have the perception that no contributors has time to dedicate like in this case...

99% of people working on open source are volunteers, none of us really have the time. I have a day job just like everyone else - I try to fit in my open source in evenings and weekends, in between spending time with family, football (I coach), home renovations etc. If something is going to take hours of research and more hours to develop, then it will likely have to wait until a gap in my schedule opens up. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.  So yes projects might look abandonded, and maybe they are, but mostly the contributors are just busy. 

I don't know what the solutions are, but perhaps the jedi maintainers might enable issues on the github repositories, it makes much more sense to have the issues on the same site as the source code and pull requests (github links nicely between them all). That might spur on some contributions. 
 

[dummzeuch 1517]

5 hours ago, Vincent Parrett said:

Why is this too complicated for people?

 

Sadly most of the time people ask/want but are not prepared to help/contribute. Github is not the barrier. 

I can't speak for other people, only for me. And Github is the barrier for me, in particular because I don't use git, and that's because I don't see any advantage for me using it (people have tried to convince me and failed, so don't waste your time trying it again). So I'd have to start using git just to contribute to something on Github? Unlikely to happen.

[Vincent Parrett 763]

4 minutes ago, dummzeuch said:

people have tried to convince me and failed, so don't waste your time trying it again

Yeah I know, pretty sure I was one of them. 

 

I've used a lot of version control systems over the years in my day job and git is certainly not my favourite - like it or not it has won the version control wars (for now). FWIW inhouse we use Mercurial (with tortoisehg) - which while similar to git, is simpler - with real error messages! 

 

I chose to learn enough git to get by, and with good tools like Fork I get by ok. The days of developers only needing to know one version control systems are long gone, just like the days of only needing to know one programming language. 

 

 

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

I've become very fond of GitKraken, which is adding improvements and features every month.
https://help.gitkraken.com/gitkraken-client/current/#version-8-7-0

[Vincent Parrett 763]

3 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

I've become very fond of GitKraken

I'm too cheap, Fork is $50, gitraken is a subscription tool. 

[Davide Angeli 44]

I don't know the others but I'm using this one (very good and well supported): https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

11 minutes ago, Vincent Parrett said:

subscription tool

Yeah... it is not the only tool we have that is subscription based, is it... 😛

[Vincent Parrett 763]

38 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Yeah... it is not the only tool we have that is subscription based, is it... 😛

Does it stop working when you stop paying?

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

Given that you pay for its service, rather than the software itself, I assume it does.  
 

[rvk 44]

wrong client

Edited July 20, 2022 by rvk

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

On 7/19/2022 at 9:50 AM, dummzeuch said:

And Github is the barrier for me, in particular because I don't use git, and that's because I don't see any advantage for me using it (people have tried to convince me and failed, so don't waste your time trying it again). So I'd have to start using git just to contribute to something on Github? Unlikely to happen.

I'd still advise you to learn the Git basics. Want it or not, it became industry standard and you can't avoid it unless only coding in COBOL 🙂

Most opensource Delphi projects switched from SVN to Git.

[Davide Angeli 44]

On 7/19/2022 at 7:35 AM, Davide Angeli said:

Summurized in few words like Anders do it seems not really complicated. I will try it.

Already using git for internal use, it is actually very easy to interface with github. In a few minutes, following the advice, I was able to create a pull request containing some corrections that I had made locally and I saw that they have also already been integrated into the master branch by obones .

[dummzeuch 1517]

1 hour ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

I'd still advise you to learn the Git basics. Want it or not, it became industry standard and you can't avoid it unless only coding in COBOL 🙂

I do understand the basics of Git, I just don't like it and I don't like Github either.

And as I am nearing retirement age, maybe I won't bother. Other things (from the application domain) are more important for my current job and if I lose that job, I'll probably retire early.

1 hour ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Most opensource Delphi projects switched from SVN to Git.

Hm, maybe that could become a problem because I don't plan to stop developing software even when I retire, but probably no longer with Delphi (I don't want to pay that high price and the Community Edition is not a viable option either.

Unfortunately other projects also follow that path.

[Angus Robertson 577]

I have the same opinion of Github, it's fine for complex projects with lots of contributors, but far more complicated than SVN for projects with a small number of trusted contributors. Github may be safer, but at the expense of extra time for project owner merging contributions. 

 

I only contributed to a Github project once, it was so tedious I now just email the project owner who is welcome to ignore my contributions. 

 

That is why ICS still uses SVN, which I host on my own public servers (mostly runs itself).  But I'm also retired and not willing to spend much time learning new technology.

 

Angus

 

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

1 hour ago, Angus Robertson said:

I have the same opinion of Github, it's fine for complex projects with lots of contributors, but far more complicated than SVN for projects with a small number of trusted contributors. Github may be safer, but at the expense of extra time for project owner merging contributions. 

Disagree. I have all my projects in Git (most of them are pretty small as they represent different util collections/libs) and contributed much to multiple Git projects with one or several developers. Nothing complex. Fork the project, pull it, make changes, commit them, push them, press "Make Pull request" button. Owner has convenient UI of reviewing changes - either divided to commits or consolidated. If everything is OK he just presses "Merge" button and that's all. Also nothing prevents several devs from direct committing & pushing a-la SVN. And how contributions are implemented in SVN? Dumb and fragile diff files? Yeah, they indeed are much simpler to review *irony*

Edited July 25, 2022 by Fr0sT.Brutal