GitHub Service Outage (github.com)

New submitter thebigjeff writes: Beginning at around 7:30pm EST on 1/27/2016, GitHub's core services have been offline. Most repositories and other functionality is inaccessible. The status page is calling it a "significant network disruption." More from The Register: GitHub falls offline, devs worldwide declare today a snow day.

Comments

Must be the OS/2 Source Code

[martiniturbide]

...all the OS/2 related apps source code that I have uploaded.. people are just spamming github to get it. https://github.com/os2world

MMMMMM.. how about that mother fucking cloud?

[Rinikusu]

maybe they should've backed up their cloud in another cloud. Cloud.

Decentralized source control

[manu0601]

The selling point of git was to be a decentralized source control system.

It is interesting to see people telling about a snow day while they have a tool that do not require a central repository

Re:Decentralized source control

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to say exactly this. Then I realised that there's more to github, such as the issue trackers etc, than just git itself.

Re:Decentralized source control

[sunderland56]

Even if you are using a source control system that *does* require a central repository to be up: since when did the inability to check in prevent you from writing and debugging code? If interacting with git/svn/clearcase/etc. is more than 0.1% of your work day, maybe you're not doing it right.

If source control being inaccessible means you get the day off.... let's just say that ClearCase users would be extremely happy.

Re:Decentralized source control

[SoftwareArtist]

Github is much much more than version control. It's also bug tracking, feature tracking, discussions, web hosting, wiki, release management, etc. When all that goes down, you can still write code, but you can't communicate with the other devs anymore.

Re:Decentralized source control

[sunderland56]

So: no incoming bugs or feature requests, no merging other people's code, nobody pinging you every 5 minutes? Around here that's called "a day where I can be productive".

Re:Decentralized source control

[Dutch Gun]

I know it's fun to be snarky about the fallibility of the cloud at times like these, but in fairness, I think one has to measure these unexpected outages against the productivity gains of having a convenient centralized point to synchronize your project online, especially for historically decentralized teams like your typical open source projects.

The notion that "git is decentralized" is obviously tempered against the requirement to synchronize everyone's repositories, right? Still, I agree... the whole "github is down, I can't code today" is an even weaker excuse than something like "it's okay if I'm goofing off - I'm compiling." One of the benefits of git (and Mercurial as well, which is actually my system of choice) is that it's trivial to make a local branch and start working on some new feature. If you're working on a project, then by definition you have an entire copy of the repository locally - it's not like you need to connect to github just to see your code or check in changes locally. Even if you can't see your bug/todo list, that just means it's a great time to make a branch and start some other little project, like doing some refactoring or code cleanup - or even, heaven forbid, some documentation.

Re:Decentralized source control

[Todd Knarr]

Not all development work involves solitary coding. How do you get the latest changes from a co-worker when you can't access the repository you both normally push changes to and his personal machine with his copy of the repository doesn't accept incoming connections (and neither does yours, so you can't have him push the changes to you)? How do you access the branch you didn't know you needed until now which isn't in your local copy? How do you get that refactoring a colleague just committed and pushed before the outage that you need to have because your part of the work's predicated on it? How do you get anything into the build process when the build process pulls from the repository that's offline?

All of those can be worked around, but amusingly what you'd need to do is almost exactly what you'd need to do with a non-distributed version control system.

Re: Decentralized source control

[prefec2]

There are also decentralized ticket systems. Even though you should know enough about your tickets and tasks to have something to do for one day ;-) And if all fails, update the documentation.

Re:Decentralized source control

[Richard_at_work]

It is decentralised, I was still able to commit changes to my repo and carry on as normal. What I couldnt do was use GitHub.

GitHub has value adds which make it a nice thing to use - its an off site repo for backup, it has a nice PR and issue handling system, it has nice metrics, it has commit hooks, it acts as a good point for CI service to integrate with automatically (alternatives being you either have to handle CI locally, manually push changes to a CI repo, or expose a git repo somehow so a CI service can grab checkins and build them).

So I couldn't push my changes to GitHub and my CI service didn't run new commits for a few hours. Not to worry, its already caught up with the back log.

Do not confuse GitHub with git - the two are entirely different. GitHub could use CVS and still have all the value adds, it would just use a shit source code management system.

Re: Decentralized source control

[bill_mcgonigle]

And if all fails, update the documentation.

Github mostly hosts open source projects.

</snark>

Re:Decentralized source control

[turbidostato]

Or you send patches by e-mail, just like Linus did himself before start coding git.

Not everyone

[SuperKendall]

Some of us use BitBucket you know... no interruptions for me today!

Project Late

[kamaaina]

Somebody's project was late and needed an excuse so they crashed github.

Re: "7:30 PM"

[prefec2]

Still they are an international service with customers around the world. Therefore, it would be logical to usw UTC. Especially, as most people know their difference to UTC, but not some freaky timezone in a country far way. Alternatively they could use AOE , but that is only known by scientists as the paper deadline time zone.

Re:"7:30 PM"

[Nadir]

Brussels is in CET (Central European Time)

Re:How is it a snow-day if you're using Git?

[TWX]

it just means you make a few more commits before pushing and pulling

Funny, I got the same suggestions in health class in high school...

Re: "7:30 PM"

[loufoque]

Right, and that's extremely confusing because elsewhere in the world S means Summer.
WET/WEST, GMT/BST, CET/CEST, etc.

There is nothing "standard" about a time zone, so the deduction that S refers to summer time makes more sense.

Re:"7:30 PM"

[KingMotley]

FYI, the international code for North America is "1".

So when people say America is #1, they are just static a well known fact.