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Hold on Loosely

Original Post - 20 Aug 2025 - Michael H. Scott

Visit Structural Analysis Is Simple on Substack.

Today I was setting up some GitHub Actions involving private repository A checking out and doing some stuff with private repository B, which happens to be home to BennySparse.

After spending a couple hours generating personal access tokens and creating GitHub secrets then attempting to use the tokens and secrets in a .yml file, I gave up and made private repository B, the BennySparse repo, public.

So much easier. Everything worked. No secrets or tokens.

Besides, BennySparse is a C++ implementation–or really a straight up translation–of Timothy Davis’s C code. No reason to keep the code private. It’s not like I did something new and cling-worthy like implement Concrete23.

Beware if you clone the BennySparse repo though. I get a segmentation fault when I re-order the equations, so use the natural ordering. If you find the bug, let me know.

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Hold on loosely
But don’t let go
If you cling too tightly
You’re gonna lose control