Moving some of Python to GitHub?

Posted Dec 4, 2014 3:07 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
In reply to: Moving some of Python to GitHub? by viro
Parent article: Moving some of Python to GitHub?

> What do you mean, "mailing list"? What's wrong with personal email? It's not as if _that_ had been hard to come up with, after all.

Did you miss where I'd rather contributions go to somewhere public rather than private email? Sure, I'll do it if necessary, but it's low in my preference list.

> Unless something has changed, gmail ought to provide imaps access, so any normal MUA ought to work...

Yep. And I use it exclusively (via mutt with help from vim, offlineimap, and esmtp).

> I really don't get it - all you need is an ability to pull from the tree hosted by whoever is hosting it and push to it (e.g. with gitolite(1)). Do pulls and merges in your local tree, then push the result into the mirroring public one. Allows to handle trivial conflicts conveniently, while we are at it, etc. Public tree (and its host) don't need to be aware of any of that.

And that's what I do…for my projects. Even GitHub pull requests get pulled, merged locally, then pushed. But not everyone does that.

> As for the buttons... what's wrong with cut'n'paste from mutt(1) into xterm running shell session?

Not every project uses email for patches. For those that use pull requests, GitHub is more convenient (and it isn't something Bitbucket can't implement; they just haven't).

Moving some of Python to GitHub?

Posted Dec 4, 2014 3:45 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (2 responses)

So set a blog up and post copies of those requests there... And cut'n'paste part was very definitely *not* about patches - too high chances of whitespace damage that way. No, it's "select that line with git URL in your MUA, type 'git pull ' at shell prompt, paste the selection there and hit enter". That's why it's considered normal to use that format for pull request mail... I still don't get it. If you want discussion to happen in public, but not on a public maillist, fine, post exact same text wherever it is that you are discussing stuff. What's so special about github pull requests? I've only used github to clone (and fetch from) repositories hosted there, so I really have no such experience with them, but everything I've heard so far sounds quite unconvincing...

Moving some of Python to GitHub?

Posted Dec 4, 2014 6:34 UTC (Thu) by cebewee (guest, #94775) [Link]

It easily provides some public development infrastructure, even for projects small enough I wouldn't bother to set up blogs, mailing lists, issue tracker et al.

For example, Hackages has a lot of small Haskell libraries, often developed by a single person. Due to them being on Github, I have a standardized platform for communicating issues with the maintainer (I can even use mail to continue the discussion on their issue tracker). And this infrastructure comes basically for free with the repository -- no need to setup a separate mailing list or whatever is the preferred form of communication for you. Otherwise, most wouldn't bother and you are back to private communication with the maintainer.

Moving some of Python to GitHub?

Posted Dec 9, 2014 16:25 UTC (Tue) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> So set a blog up and post copies of those requests there...

Seriously, who has the time and willingness to set up a blog and manage the publication of requests in it?

> What's so special about github pull requests?

They work.

Without a fuss or without the need for a project owner to set up anything more than a git repository. No need to setup blog or worry about how to publish, store and backup anything etc.

It takes 1 piece of information to fork and send pull requests. A project at GH. Sending stuff to mailing lists often requires creating an account first, and finding the aforementioned mailing list before that. So a PR is just a way to contribute that has a much lower barrier to entry for someone already on GH.