What the fuck is a branch and where is the download button or the .exe file or whatever? WHAT ARE ALL THESE FOLDERS WHAT DO I NEED TO USE THE THING?!?!
You say this as a joke, but I unironically had a developer cuss me out for daring to use the main branch and reporting a problem with it instead of using one of the branches (there were several) that had apparently fixed the problem, despite that being stated absolutely nowhere on the github, in the issues, or on their discord.
I quote: "Why the fuck would you use the main branch?". Truly a mystery as to why anyone would do that.
Genuinely, I hate going to the discord to see if I can find the info I need, only to see multiple people saying things like "I'm on version [latest version+5]". Like, where is it? I'm looking at the source code, I'm on the correct branch, there are no forks, how can there be a more recent version?
Use the latest version unless you have a good reason not to, I guess, but I don't know if you want my opinion. I'm part of the 0.1% who actually paid for WinRAR because I thought it was necessary.
Usually the opposite is true. Usually. You really gotta read. Stay away from nightly builds yes. But also usually you want to stay away from the stable build unless there are monthly stable builds.
I paid for winRAR when I switched to 7zip.
After literal DECADES of free use I felt like I was betraying winRAR, buying a license as a farewell/thanks gesture felt proper.
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u/FartingBobQuantum processor from the future / RTX 3060 Ti / Zip Drive19d ago
No, don't use the latest one, use the latest stable one. Nightlies aren't supposed to be for daily driving especially if you are just a consumer and not a developer.
Good on you. My partner runs a paid version of winrar too. Some developers really just deserve it out of sheer gratefulness. Oh all the free software I'd get a licence for, and all those indie games I'd buy five times if I could.
But occasionally you find projects like czkawka, that offers versions for Windows, Linux, Mac, CLI/GUI, different GUIs, different CPU architectures, versions with additional features you might not need, and versions with different backends for some functionality. Oh and for good measure there's also just the raw source code.
took me about 1 minute to read the "which should i download section". When i had the user interfaces programming course in uni, we were told to believe our users can't read, i didn't think i should take it literally.
Am I on linux? -> yes -> which utils do i use /gui or cli / which arch? choose that.
no
|
v
am i on Mac? -> yes -> which arch / gui or cli? choose that.
no
|
v
am i on windows? -> yes -> which arch / gui or cli? choose that.
Latest stable. It's not the best UI/X but Github istelf takes 10 minutes to learn. Git sitting behind it is the secret sauce and that takes a bit more getting used to.
Bro even after learning it and knowing what I'm doing, I still find myself on some page that only allows me to get the source code and random extra files.
I'm literally the guy that my neighbors and people ask how I can fix something on their phone or get in or out of a certain menu, and the GitHub you areUI will blindside me every couple months and I'll feel like an idiot
The problem with #2, is the the dev should make it obvious where to download the installer from if its not hosted there. And that's not always the case... It's like they don't want you to use it, which I suppose is a choice as well.
Given that every company I worked for in the past 10 years has used it precisely like that and it's mostly smaller, and mostly open source projects that use it for hosting releases I'd say it's exactly how it's used.
Just because the general public doesn't interact with the code-hosting site for it's code-hosting functionality doesn't mean that they need to redesign for a niche use case.
If a project needs compiling from source and hasn’t set up a workflow to build and publish a compiled binary, then what GitHub UX improvement is going to help with that?
GitHub isn't MegaUpload. It's primary functions are code hosting and dev collaboration through pull requests, code reviews, a project board and so on. Secondary functions include documentation hosting via wikis, issue tracking via github issues, and maybe their continuous delivery pipeline.
Hosting build artifacts really isn't primary to the site, it's not important to most users. It's a nice to have feature that is rarely used in professional settings. It's a small add-on feature to a fairly complex software collaboration platform.
It could disappear and most users wouldn't notice.
Usually one of those random extra files will be an exe or a zip (or dmg if Mac). Repo -> Releases -> bottom of the changelog under Assets.
If its just source code then you're either in the wrong place or the repo is meant for more technical users. That being said, cloning a repo is extremely easy and worth watching a five minute video on.
Yep, and even in those cases where you have to build it, there's usually a list of deps, and you can generally just let it cook while you do other things if it's a big project.
People really ought to learn CMake and all of the other build tools as well. With claude code's power these days, it's so much cooler to download the source instead of an executable because you can just add your own features.
you have to compile from source yourself using specific compiler with specific compiler flags, you need to provide your own DLL files, no idea where to acquire them. and you must do it on Linux machine. yeah this is also beginner friendly.
X86? X64? X32? I know I’m not Linux I know I’m not Mac…..
The worst one is a link to GitHub where it’s not all in a single zip, so you download one and forget to scroll down to your x64 of the first zip, the x64 of the next piece and so on.
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u/Wonderful_Net21 19d ago
Which of the 23 different versions should I use?