GitHub implementing Erlang git-daemon

http://github.com/blog/112-supercharged-git-daemon

by pjackson • 18 years ago

33 16 18 years ago

wmf• 18 years ago

The two benefits mentioned sound like they have nothing to do with Erlang.

jrockway4• 18 years ago

But it's much more fun to completely rewrite the application in a new language, rather than just submit a patch to the existing daemon! Don't you know that you can't perform "flexible filesystem mappings" in C? cough

mojombo5• 18 years ago

It's not about that at all. I'm more familiar with Erlang than C, and the git source is a twisty jungle of advanced C code. I could have patched git-daemon, but to have a project that I can easily understand, maintain, and improve, I chose to write my own in Erlang. My tests show the Erlang and C git servers to be very similar in performance, so that's not a concern. And I can guarantee that egitd has far fewer lines of code!

I don't choose languages because they're cool or trendy. I choose them because they make it easier to Get Things Done. And for a startup, that's an unmistakable benefit.

ambition• 18 years ago

Erlang is the new cool thing. There's a marketing benefit to writing programs in a cool new language, especially in github's early market: People who jumped on the git bandwagon because it was the new cool thing.

mojombo5• 18 years ago

I'm the dev at GitHub that's working on egitd. It's true that those two features are not Erlang specific. They could be accomplished in any language. However, Erlang lets me write very robust servers with tiny amounts of code. The automatic SMP support is also a huge plus when dealing with concurrency.

pjackson2• 18 years ago

Aha. My guess was close.

pjackson2• 18 years ago

I like the new features, but I also don't understand the Erlang connection. I think the sentiment is right that it's "cool and new" and should therefore be embraced by geeks.

If it helps them distribute their application more in a more scalable way, or in a more stable way, I'd love to understand how.

My "guess", knowing little about Erlang, is that the server code is simpler....

GitHub implementing Erlang git-daemon

Related Stories