So much vague outrage over nothing. That CI system created by so called monkeys is the one of the best free CI service in the world. Not everyone has the millions of dollars like Zig Foundation to create their own CI servers.
After that they appreciate GitHub Sponsors, but say it is now a complete liability just because a project leader left. What are the actual changes? Any new rule? But no, it is now a "liability" and we should accept it.
Honestly speaking I like how big projects are exploring new hosting options. But there is no need to attack other platforms like this to promote your new host.
> So much vague outrage over nothing.
So you just chose to ignore the technical problems we have with GitHub Actions and then say there are no problems. That's certainly a take.
> That CI system created by so called monkeys is the one of the best free CI service in the world.
We self-host all our CI machines so the "free" hosted runners have no relevance here.
> Not everyone has the millions of dollars like Zig Foundation to create their own CI servers.
We don't have "millions of dollars". If only!
I'd also note that we spend our money very efficiently; most of our CI machines are consumer-grade hardware hosted in team member's homes. We don't just throw endless amounts of money at cloud providers.
> After that they appreciate GitHub Sponsors, but say it is now a complete liability just because a project leader left. What are the actual changes? Any new rule? But no, it is now a "liability" and we should accept it.
GitHub Sponsors is a liability because Microsoft can increase their cut at any time, or even axe it outright if they don't think it's profitable for them anymore. This risk is very real considering that, as Andrew pointed out, the feature has been neglected for years. It is objectively less risky for us to have donors use a platform like Every.org.
Can’t any donation platform you don’t fully control cut you off at any point?
What exactly is different about GitHub sponsors here?
In theory sure, but you have to evaluate how likely it is.
Some typical dynamics:
Big org platform -> exposed to risk, as you are not a significant addition to their bottom line
Small donation platform -> Can be easily bullied by payment processors to "derisk"
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every.org is a bit special, as it only lists 501c nonprofits - which the Zig Foundation is - and AFAIK has a decent track record. Most other open source projects don't clear that bar.
Anyone who has ever used Gitlab, or dare my foul mouth say Jenkins, has experienced a better system than Github actions.
Unless it's miraculously improved recently as it's been a couple years for me, they didn't even document their regex/pattern matching. Best I could find via searching was that it was whatever Ruby used, which wasn't any kind of real standard.
I don't want to call anyone names, but whoever defends said system deserves some ribbing.
I've used both and I don't know if they've been improved but both were terrible a few years ago (at least in our case). Very unstable and finicky. I last used Jenkins in 2017 and Gitlab in 2021, so I don't know how they are today.
Gitlab smokes and rolls githubs shitty ass CI all day any day for over 10 years now
I've had so many issues with Gitlab CI. I don't think it's really any better than Github's.
I'll take any CI service that isn't cobbled together by mountains of nested and indirected YAML.
Absolute horror to maintain.
Yeah... are there any though?
What? Jenkins? No way.
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Github was great at the time when it replaced Sourceforge. But that was a long time ago and actually better alternatives are popping up left and right. And that's even without Microsoft's recent-ish enshittifaction process (e.g. letting everything rot that's not AI related). Githubs entire management and development process is simply broken beyond repair, monkeys at the wheel or not.
PS: also Gitlab CI is so much better than GH Actions that they are not even in the same league. It is very apparent that Gitlab is actually dogfooding their stuff, which is not the impression I get from any Github feature.
Oh come on.
Micros$$$$ft owns github.
We don't need to give some pretend sympathy.
When you can afford to have good things, and you're not, don't come crying about getting called bad names.
Actions is bad.
> I dare anyone who is delusional enough to think they can create something better to actually make something better
Actions speak louder than words.
Zig is leaving because of the issues they mentioned.
> People tried other services like GitLab and realized it is slower, uglier and overall worse than GH and came crawling back.
Maybe. I guess we'll see.
I think the OP has been pretty clear that they're not happy with it, and, they're putting their money where their mouth is.
Clearly, just complaining about broken things isn't working.
Maybe a couple more big moves like this is what GH needs to wake up and allocate some more resources (that they, can categorically afford) to fixing things.
So who is complaining that Zig leaving GH is somehow a problem? I just don't like how they have to put out false claims like there are big problems with GH CI and Sponsors.
Zig is leaving GH for another provider. They did not make a better GH and fixed all the problems with it.
You literally have to fill out a form to convince Codeberg that you need CI. I would take GH CI over that.
> I just don't like how they have to put out false claims like there are big problems with GH CI and Sponsors
These aren't false claims.
Thats my point.
Microsoft can afford to make these tools better; they just dont care.
Yes, its better than having nothing, but honestly you have to be wearing blinkers not to see the decline rn.
> Microsoft can afford to make these tools better; they just dont care.
They certainly have enough money, but can they actually improve it? Who could step in? How? Do you think more hiring would help? Or would it make it worse?
Leadership could try and step in by force. But they'd have to undermine whoever is running github actions to do so. It would be a huge, risky political move. And for what? Are they actually losing customers over gh actions? I doubt it. I'm just not sure anyone cares to spend that much political capital to "fix" something that is arguably not that broken.
Big companies also simply can't fix stuff that's broken internally. Its not a money thing. Its a culture & politics thing. Its a leadership thing.
For example, does anyone remember Google Code? It was a github-like code hosting service that predated github by many years. Compared to github, it was terrible. When github came out, google could have rewritten Code from the ground up to copy github's better design and better choices. (Kind of like android did with ios). But they didn't. Github kicked their butt for many years. But nothing happened. They couldn't fix it. Now google code is basically dead.
Or why didn't Adobe build a viable figma competitor? Why didn't microsoft make a successful iphone or ipad competitor? Why didn't intel win the contract to make the iphone CPU? These aren't money problems. Its something else.
I've only heard stories of a couple leaders who had the force of personality to fix problems like this. Like Steve Jobs. And Elon Musk pulls some wild stunts too. Frankly, I don't think I'd like to work under either of them.
Github has been entirely integrated into Microsoft's AI division since the last Github CEO left a couple of months ago (not much of a loss since he was responsible for Githubs AI enshittifaction). Those org-changes alone are plenty of reason to lose trust in Github's future. IMHO things can only get worse with an "AI first" division in charge and now is probably the best time to jump ship, at least it's the responsible thing to do for sufficiently large and professional projects (and I bet that ziglang is only one of many to follow).
> But they'd have to undermine whoever is running github actions
I'm not sure if anybody is running the GH Actions project at the moment beyond bare maintenance work and trying to keep the whole thing from collapsing into a pile of rubble. There is also no separate Github entity anymore within Microsoft, so nothing to "undermine".
> Are they actually losing customers over gh actions? I doubt it.
Did you read the article?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt Zig was ever a paying customer of github.
Damn, I guess if Zig really wanted to spite Github they should have stayed and continued being a drain in Microsoft's resources.
The best free CI system in the world has macOS 15 runners running at 75% capacity due to a background process that consumes 100% CPU [1]. The problem is known to them since May but not fixed half a year later.
[1] https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/13358
So tell us where is the better free macOS CI provider? I would love to switch to them.
That is what I meant by the BEST FREE CI provider. It is not the best if you have money for something better.
I would love to know it. I use GH Actions to test my open source code on MacOS, Windows and Linux FOR FREE which is amazing. Without them I just wouldn't test on anything other than what I happen to have locally or what TravisCI/CircleCI had in their free tier before GH Actions made things so much easier.
But if you do know of alternatives, I'm all ears.
Yes I want to know too. Where can I run this test matrix for less than $100/mo unbilled (where half the “cost” is from macOS alone): https://github.com/ncruces/go-sqlite3/wiki/Support-matrix
I built a similar matrix to test wazero (of which I'm a maintainer).
Unfortunately I don’t really know what a CI provider should do to fix this.
> That CI system created by so called monkeys is the one of the best free CI service in the world.
It really isn't (look at Gitlab's for comparison), the only advantage of Github CI is that it offers free Mac runners.
Well nothing is better than anything else other than the things that make it better.
You are not talking a out github actions? Monkeys would have done it better.
And yet there are millions of monkeys out there who've produced nothing.
The only good thing about it is their very generous limits for "open source" projects (it doesn't even have to be free software AFAIK, just the source has to be visible to everyone).
The CI service itself is an absolute trash fire caused by the usual Microsoft NIH, and if they have financial means not to deal with it anymore, I see no reason for them to waste their limited development time on dealing with it.
Where else would the CI service for a Microsoft product be invented? NIH is a weird insult in this context. If Microsoft had instead acquired a CI service you’d be complaining about how they’re reducing competition.
Microsoft had their own CI service and it existed before GitHub Actions did, it was renamed Azure Dev Ops but it existed before GitHub Actions and it was largely similar from what I remember.
> Where else would the CI service for a Microsoft product be invented?
FYI Azure has its own CI service and that's pretty bad too.
>it doesn't even have to be free software AFAIK, just the source has to be visible to everyone
With the implication that MS is free to harvest it for LLM training?
They could have easily done that without all the insults.
I agree it’s unprofessional, but at least we’re talking about GHA, even if tangentially, because there’s a lot to talk about and not much of it is good.
I would agree if they weren't so clearly deserved. Calling shit out as being shit is fine.
Just because you think something is shit does not mean it becomes gospel for the rest of us. Millions of other people are fine with GitHub, respect their choice.
He didn't insult the people who are still using github.
I'm pretty sure the Zig Foundation does not have millions of dollars, contrary to Microsoft which has a market capitalization in the trillions, but consistently produces flaming garbage, product after product.
CI's job for me is to just run a nix flake
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