What do people feel about the code at the top (both old and new)
The thing I think I want at the top is the readme. If I'm looking for repos I need to know what it is before I look at the code. If it's a repo I'm working on I'm more likely to look at the code locally then the code on github. When I do look at the code on github it doesn't need to be on the front page for me. https://github.com/username/reponame/code or the links to various branches would suffice for me. Even if I am looking for the code the 95% of the time the code is not above the fold, instead there are several lines of folders and config I don't care about and so I still have to scroll down or search. In other words, the code at the top doesn't even help for code.
To put it another way, the code at the top is actively hostile to what I need to get done.
By "want the source" you mean you want to look at the source via the gitlab website ?
I would interpret "want the source" as "I want to download the source" in which case showing the files is useless. All you need is a "download source" button
The conversation was about viewing the source online vs the README so clearly I meant I want to glance through the source online. There's a few reasons I might be doing this:
- before deciding if I want to clone the repository.
- Or sometimes I might just want to check the hooks of a particular API (eg the outputs of a Terraform module) where there isn't really a need to manually clone the repository just to validate some assumptions.
- Sometimes I might want to quickly verify the code that's on origin master is up-to-date (everyone has committed PRs and merged back into master).
- Sometimes I might just want to validate what code kicked off the CI/CD pipeline.
- Sometimes I might be demoing some changes in the sprint review and rather than spin up another IDE / switch branches / etc I might just open a new tab and walk the team through what has been committed on Github
Also nobody was talking about Gitlab specifically. BitBucket and GitHub were mentioned though.
How would you know you even want to look at the code at all if you haven't read the description of the code which is currently below all the code at the bottom of the page?
I need to know what the project is and what it's trying to do before I have any interest in looking at the code.
The thing I think I want at the top is the readme. If I'm looking for repos I need to know what it is before I look at the code. If it's a repo I'm working on I'm more likely to look at the code locally then the code on github. When I do look at the code on github it doesn't need to be on the front page for me. https://github.com/username/reponame/code or the links to various branches would suffice for me. Even if I am looking for the code the 95% of the time the code is not above the fold, instead there are several lines of folders and config I don't care about and so I still have to scroll down or search. In other words, the code at the top doesn't even help for code.
To put it another way, the code at the top is actively hostile to what I need to get done.