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Hi! Jason, CTO @ GitHub, here

You’re getting at the heart of Actions. Actions was never intended to be “CI” or any such vertical capability. It has always intended to be a platform that exposes capabilities like CI or packages etc out to the world, but the underlying serverless very flexible workflow platform is the bedrock upon which we want to build the future

My long held view that the only real ‘competitor’ to what I want github to be was AWS/major cloud infra companies and if you believe in that view along with me, you likely see what the why the past four years of github and the next few years of github make a lot of sense

And it even makes more sense when you squint just a bit and realize what codespaces + repos + actions (CI/security/packages + other things) + automated workflows would eventually do. Now imagine a bit further out into the future and what it would mean if we understood your production workloads a bit more


Hi Jason, thank you very much for the background and the explanation. It is fascinating to see the progress in this direction.

I started raising my eyebrow (in the best possible sense) upon seeing parts of tooling very similar to ours but simpler and more importantly - without moving parts. We operate in biomedical data space and deal with flat/static data a lot, for example we power https://biokeanos.com with data-in-repo, so Flat Data was immediately interesting.

It is really inspiring to see GitHub actions to having a foray in this direction, definitely something to keep an eye on.


If this is the vision, please let us write actions directly with typescript or some legitimate programming language (not YAML). It is currently impossible to debug and reuse action code.

I am working on an entire company migration off GitHub actions because it cannot scale. Full programmatic control and local debugging that allows me to reuse and test code in a single repository would have justified staying with GH.


You can already do that in a few ways like with docker or the run command. It’s been there from the beginning. YAML is just the config.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax...


Those only work at the actions level. I need them at the workflow level. The biggest issue here is the differentiation between actions and workflows, I need my workflows to be treated as actions and reuse entire segments of them. This isn't possible without copy/pasting code.

I also need arbitrary logic to configure and run my workflows (like an else branch... that would be nice).

This is in large part why Team City and Jenkins beat out Actions when we reevaluated.

The YAML file is not a config file in the workflows I have written, it is the top level program calling many other programs. The syntax limitations (and unsafety of its interpreter) make that unwieldy. But it's not possible to workaround without never using any other action in the marketplace, which kind of defeats the purpose of using actions at all.


This is awesome!

@danfox, sent you an email though commenting here too.

I'm the CTO @ GitHub. Would love to talk to you about this and other things we are building in this area at GitHub.

Feel free to email direct to jason at github.com


I do enjoy moments like these on hacker news when someone presents a project for X and the CTO of X shows up and wants to talk. It shows how directly of an impact one can potentially have in this community.

I hope this means we’re getting grep searches for github soon. Cheers.


If OP's goal was to get a job at Github, I'd say this was very well played.


It would certainly be an expensive play. When he mentioned a 20 core system, I'm assuming it is some VM system, since I don't know of any 20 core CPUs. I'm guessing he is using DigitalOcean and he has two of them, so he is looking at $1000 a month in hosting cost.


It's an expensive side project for sure, but it doesn't have to be anywhere near as expensive as that.

My own side project uses a server with 20 cores (2x E5-2690v2 CPUs), with 256GB RAM and a 2TB SSD. This is a dedicated server I rented from tier.net in Texas, after seeing it listed on webhostingtalk [1]. It costs about $160/mo, and that's recently fallen further by paying for 3 months up front.

1. https://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36


github's code search is notoriously bad, feels like a huge missed opportunity. Nice to see you guys reaching out to other people working in this area.



I'm not a dev and what i like to to do is go searching for code (a la exact match) to replace whatever variable or text should be changed. Github search in repo kinda worked at some moment, then not.

Then i had to download repo in my local; run VS code (updating first), search there, modify, push. I wish i could do this on Ghub web GUI


The fact that you can’t search for file names is the funniest part to me.


If you fork a repo, you can't search on the forked repo. Confirmed grep.app behaves the same way as github search.


You can but only in the repo itself not on a site wide scale.


Really? I searched for `filename:home.nix` (which brought me to https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=filename%3Ahome.n...). That seems site-wide to me, unless I'm misunderstanding you.


These kind of keywords really should be next to the search box with a question mark next to them or something.

TIL some of them are on this page that you only see if you search for an empty string:

https://github.com/search?q=

Click on 'prefixes'. This kind of thing should be readily available from any search box that searches through GitHub.


That's awesome. I didn't know about the keyword filename: I've been using the button to the left of "Clone or Download" this whole time. Thanks for the info!


Agree. You can’t even do a literal search with symbols.

I think there were better solutions on the early 2000’s.


hah. you beat me to it, Jason.

@danfox, i'm always down to talk code search as well - rand@github.com


iirc, Github uses (used?) my old project (https://github.com/intel/hyperscan) at Intel. It's probably faster than the alternatives, although if you want to support all types of regex you'll need to use Hyperscan as a prefilter for a richer regex engine like PCRE.

This project looks like it pulls literal factors out of the regex that I type in, maybe to an index a la that Russ Cox blog post a while back about Code Search. It seems to Not Like things that have very open-ended character classes (e.g. \w) unless there is a decent length literal involved somewhere.

It seems to have a very rudimentary literal extraction routine, as it decides to give a partial result set when fed an alternation between two literals that it handles pretty well on their own.


pattern is, btw: (teakettle\w|abcd)

Either pattern in alternation works fine, but even a simple alternation of the two goes back to the behavior that you might expect to get from awful patterns like \d..\d..\w...\s...\d (i.e. reporting only a partial set of matches).


Did you mean either patter in "isolation"?


Yup, you're right - I wound up saying the opposite of what I meant!


How about the ability to search code on forks? GitLab allows it. At least have feature parity? Thanks.


I don't typically comment on things like this, though in this case I very, very much want to.

My son is autistic. He's 8. We had him tested when he was 5. He also has ADHD. If ever anyone cares about working with non-NT folks and those on the spectrum it's me. We moved to where we live specifically so we could get early intervention for him.

My five year old daughter might be on the spectrum, we are having her tested. She does have expressive/receptive language disorder.

Our youngest daughter, now 2, seems NT so far.

For the record on the original material. There's a chance the person was non-NT, as you suggest. However, that same percentage chance exists for at least three, maybe four, of his co-workers as well, the ones that were effected by this person.

I'm not dismissing your original statement. I do think it is harder for non-NT folks, even in tech. It's why my style is the way it is. If anything, I'm likely overly sympathetic to the non-NT folks given my situation.

I've written two other things that I often reference when talking about these topics that might be interesting. I hope you can appreciate my side knowing more about my personal situation and how that influenced and shaped my current views.

https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/no-one-is-the-villain-in-the...

https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/just-one-weird-trick-95fe7b5...


Care to give elevator pitch for drywall? I checked it out and looks interesting, but wanted to see where you were going with it.


Hey Jason, thanks for taking a look. Right now it's just an open source project of mine, not a business or anything. If something isn't clear after reading the GitHub page, please open an issue or send me an email. I've started breaking out wiki pages from questions I've received. My main focus right now is getting more eyes on the project and gathering feedback.


Do you have a bug number?

Can you detail the other issues you are having? I am interested in where Ubuntu causes you more sys admin problems and not less. Our goal is to make the easiest to use, best looking system possible.


No, I don't have a bug number. Yes, I would be very happy to have this fixed. The question is - how much time and effort will it cost me?

Shall we go through the process of getting this sorted, and I will document carefully the resources I expend on it? Can we take this to email and get it fixed? It's a brand new machine, and I'd love to have it working properly, so any help is gratefully accepted, and I'm happy to play my part in getting it sorted.


Awesome :)

Easiest way to start is file a bug. There are a few ways to do that, but in this case one of the following two are great.

1. $ ubuntu-bug network-manager

This will gather information about your card and any crashes related to networking etc, send it to LP (Launchpad) and star the bug filing process.

Or

2. Go to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+b... where you can see if any bugs match what is happening to you. You can then say 'yes, this also effects me' by clicking near the top of the bug. If you don't see a bug that is right for you, you can file a new bug via 'report a bug' on the right hand side near the top of the screen.

Both ways will require an LP account (sorry!), but it just takes seconds to create.

If you just do one of those two (and give me the bug number), we can start taking a look. Obviously we'd love for people who have the time to test potential fixes, though we know this just isn't a realistic possibility in most cases. If, however, you do have the time and are so inclined, that is a great way to also help us figure out what is wrong and how to fix it.

Either way, having a Bug # is great and where we should start. Also, if you have a bug # and are still posting in those forums, having people 'me too' the bug raises awareness of the issue for us in Launchpad, meaning, the more people the bug effects, the hotter the bug and the higher it will be on our (or in this case, my) priority list. In this case, though, if you have a bug #, I'll add it to my list directly ;)


Thanks Jason. Once I finish my current tasks and can reconnect my laptop via a wire I'll do that. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6504268

I'll get on it ASAP, but it's Sunday evening here, and I have a few other commitments looming. But I will do it, and thanks again.


Wifi issues have been due to kernel/driver problems in the past and have been seen in each of the major distros (depending on the sequence with which a given kernel and driver appear in the distribution).

Logging your issues as a bug and then getting the other people in the forums to join the bug would help people cross reference the issue.

Does anyone else remember the WiFi power management kernel panic bug back in 12.04 development? Got squashed well before release.


  > Logging your issues as a bug and then getting
  > the other people in the forums to join the bug
  > would help people cross reference the issue.
So step-by-step, how and where do I do that?


Does this help? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Btw, reporting bugs is contributing to open-source. It's a way of giving back, for getting the resulting product of billions of man hours (and woman hours) of work, for free.


It might - I've skimmed it, and I think I can find everything I need in there. Thank you.

I fully recognize that me spending time on a bug report is a way of contributing to open-source. I have no problems with that, and I look forward, in some sense, to doing so. My comments are, as I say elsewhere, trying to help as well, to try to help make the system better by recognizing that it is currently optimized for people who already know a lot, and are willing to spend a lot of time trying to work out how to do stuff.

Most of the world isn't like that, so maybe something can be done to help make Ubuntu fit the world better.

When I get time I'll move over to the laptop and get started. I'll also log my time, and see what actually happens in the long run.

Many thanks for your response.


Last time I checked man-hours does not refer to the male gender...


Want to work on Ubuntu? Canonical is hiring.

General careers page : http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/careers

Specific to my team, I'm looking for someone to keep up with X.org, Mir and the various graphics related packages: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH03/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?or...

EDIT: I should note, nearly all positions are remote including the one on my team.


Mind if I pass on the link to your comment to a friend of mine who might be interested (and isn't precommitted to grad-school right now like I am)?


I'm the Ubuntu Desktop manager, also known as the guy generally responsible for making sure Ubuntu works and works well. I wish I could address each and every issue listed here individually, but I can't. Suffice it to say, if you are having any issues, file a bug on Launchpad for Ubuntu, Unity or any other package and we'll make sure the right person is looking at the issue.

Some links to remember:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu https://launchpad.net/unity and https://launchpad.net/unity-2d

On each page there is a 'report a bug' link on the upper right.

Or, if you experience a crash, you can report the bug at the command line by typing 'ubuntu-bug' and a series of prompts will walk you through the data collection.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs



Wow! Thanks for writing this up.

I'll cherry pick for now and talk about more in a general follow-up later in the day.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'place tracker', but if you check out some of the things coming in Unity, I think you'll like them. In Unity, Dash and Places are going to allow people to search, find and launch applications much easier.

An article from the OMG! folks w/ to give you an idea.... http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/quick-tip-enable-full-scr...


Awesome list.

My personal #1 pet peeve for 10.10 was the resize problem.

There are some updates for that including a new gripper as well as increasing to 3px invisible border for resizing. Not to mention that Unity also sports some snap functionality.

This OMG! article was from two months ago, but you can get an idea for some of the resizing behavior. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/a-smattering-of-natty-upd...

The Skype menu is likely a bug w/ Skype detecting which system you are using. If you goto Skype->Options->General it might say 'Desktop settings' and that could get confused detecting what you are using. You can force it to use GTK+ and your issue should disappear.

I'll address the rest of the list in my general follow up to this thread around the EOD. Cheers!


Thanks for the Skype-Tip!


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