104 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
104 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
The [2013 git-annex user survey](http://git-annex-survey.branchable.com/polls/2013/)
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has been running for several weeks and around 375 people have answered
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at least the first question. While I am going to leave it up through the
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end of the year, I went over the data today to see what interesting
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preliminary conclusions I can draw.
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* 11% build git-annex from source. More than I would have guessed.
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* 20% use the prebuilt versions from the git-annex website.
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This is a number to keep in mind later, when more people have upgraded to
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the last release, which checks for upgrades. I can run some stats on
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the number of upgrade checks I receive, and multiplying that by 5 would
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give a good approximation of the total number of computers running
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git-annex.
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* I'm surprised to see so many more Linux (79%) than OSX (15%) users.
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Also surprising is there are more Windows (2%) than Android (1%) users.
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(Android numbers may be artificially low since many users will use it in
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addition to one of the other OSes.)
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* Android and Windows unsurprisingly lead in ports requested, but the
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Synology NAS is a surprise runner up, with 5% (more than IOS).
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In theory it would not be too hard to make a standalone arm tarball,
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which could be used on such a device, although IIRC the Synology had
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problems with a too old linker and libc. It would help if I could make
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the standalone tarball not depend on the system linker at all.
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A susprising number (3%) want some kind of port the the Raspberry Pi, which
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is weird because I'd think they'd just be using Raspbian on it.. but a
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standalone arm tarball would also cover that use case.
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* A minimum of 1664 (probably closer to 2000) git annex repositories are being
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used by the 248 people who answered that question. Around 7 repositories
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per person average, which is either one repository checked out on 7
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different machines or two repositories on 3 machines, etc.
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* At least 143 terabytes of data are being stored in git-annex. This does
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not count redundant data. (It also excludes several hundred terabytes from
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one instituion that I don't think are fully online yet.)
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Average user has more than half a terabyte of data.
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* 8% of users store scientific data in git-annex! :) A couple of users are
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using it for game development assets, and 5% of users are using it for
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some form of business data.
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* Only 10% of users are sharing a git-annex repository with at least one
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other person. 27% use it by themselves, but want to get others using
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their repositories. This probably points to it needing to be easier for
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nontechnical users.
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* 61% of git-annex users have good or very good knowledge of git.
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This question intentionally used the same wording as the
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[general git user survey](https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitSurvey2012),
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so the results can be compared. The curves have somewhat different
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shapes, with git-annex's users being biased more toward the higher
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knowledge levels than git's users.
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* The question about how happy users are also used the same wording.
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While 74% of users are happy with git-annex, 94% are similarly happy with
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git, and a while the median git-annex user is happy, the median git user
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is very happy.
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The 10% who wrote in "very enthusiastic, but still often
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bitten by quirks (so not very happy yet, but with lots of confidence in
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the potential" might have thrown off this comparison some, but they
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certianly made their point!
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* 3% of respondants say that a bug is preventing them from using git-annex,
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but that they have not reported the bug yet. Frustrating! 1% say that a
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bug that's been reported already is blocking them.
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* 18% wrote in that they need the webapp to support using github (etc)
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as a central server. I've been moving in that direction with the
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encryption and some other changes, so it's probably time to make a UI for
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that.
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* 12% want more control over which files are stored locally when using the
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assistant.
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* A really surprising thing happened when someone wrote in that I should
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work on "not needing twice disk space of repo in direct mode", and 5% of
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people then picked this choice. This is some kind of documentation
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problem, because of course git-annex never needs 2x disk space, whether
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using direct mode or not. That's one of its advantages over git!
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* Somewhere between 59 and 161 of the survey respondants use Debian.
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I can compare this with [Debian popularity contest data](http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=git-annex)
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which has 400 active installations and 1000 total installations,
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and make guesses about what fraction of all git-annex users have answered
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the survey. By making different assumptions I got guesses that varied by
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2 orders of magnitude, so not worth bothering with. Explicitly asking how
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many people use each Linux distribution would be a good idea in next
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year's survey.
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----
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Main work today was fixing Android DNS lookups, which was trying to use
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/etc/resolv.conf to look up SRV records for XMPP, and had to be changed to
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use a getprop command instead. Since I can't remember dealing with this
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before (not impossible I made some quick fix to the dns library before and
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lost it though), I'm wondering if XMPP was ever usable on Android before.
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Cannot remember. May work now, anyway...
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