Re: [gentoo-proxy-maint] Posting patches on this mailing list instead of using GitHub

[Joonas Niilola]

On 6/7/20 8:24 PM, Ralph Seichter wrote:
> * Haelwenn Monnier:
>
>> It's not to jump the queue, in fact I get about the same lag in my
>> experience between GitHub PRs and using email. But it's much less
>> predictable.
> I don't understand the second sentence; what X is less predictable than
> what Y, and why? As for the first sentence, I have my doubts, because
> with less than 1% of contributors posting email patches, the ones that
> do are very much "in your face" about it.
>
>> I'd rather avoid GitHub completely, I do use it from time to time but
>> because I have to.
> I respect your right to dislike GitHub, but this is not about you alone
> but about having automated CI checks and a unified means of letting the
> proxy-maint members doing their volunteer job, in their own time, in a
> comfortable way. Disclaimer: I do not speak for the P-M team, nor do I
> claim to.
>
> Another important aspect is that, by using GitHub, you allow only the
> interested parties to subscribe to your pull requests (and I assume very
> few would be interested). Posting patches here is, again, "in your
> face", because rather than individually opting in on GitHub PRs, you are
> forcing people to opt out every time you post a patch. I consider this
> both impolite and annoying.
>
>> And while sending via GitHub sometimes works I also got at least one
>> PR later reverted because it didn't get a proper ACK from the
>> maintainers, if I have to also ping them through email, why not just
>> send the patch via email?
> Because one of your PRs being met with a hiccup does not remotely
> justify skipping the agreed-upon, preferred method of contribution
> altogether.
>
> There are OSS projects that use email-based patches successfully and
> consistently, like "Notmuch" does. Howevery, Notmuch has the necessary
> infrastructure to deal with these patches, and a culture of reviewing
> these patches on the mailing list. Gentoo does not operate this way.
>
>> There is also the problem of having to sync your repo to GitHub, if I
>> forget to push gentoo's master to my fork I end up having to send all
>> the past history manually, and I discovered this one quite later on.
> You must be joking, right? Synchronising two Git remotes is no more
> complicated than using "git send-email", and even if it was, learning to
> use Git is mandatory. I remember nearly making a mess of my very first
> pull request because of a Git-related mistake, which other people
> obviously noticed. I assure you that I never made that mistake again,
> and I am confident you can manage as well.
>
>> Finally, I don't have this issue but github isn't available to
>> everyone depending on where they live, and often a VPN isn't an
>> option there, so another option needs to exists.
> As I wrote right off the bat: I know patches *may* be posted here. That
> does not imply they should, especially if the author, like yourself,
> admittedly has the ability to use GitHub instead, which is clearly the
> preferred method of contributing. If GitHub is an option, posting
> patches here is both unnecessary and rude, in my opinion.
>
> -Ralph

Hey,

there are some bits in this message where the tone comes out a bit
hostile. I'd hope we can continue this discussion in a civil manner.

There were some interesting points already and I can see the bandwith be
a problem for some.

In the end, we are *all* trying to make Gentoo better, right? I am
thankful of every contribution, and this mailing list is low traffic at
the moment. If Github is not an option, please don't let that stop you
from contributing. You can of course send git-format patches directly to
proxy-maint@g.o, too.

But I'm still interested about the discussion _why_ Github doesn't work
for everyone. We can maybe find some new ideas or new ways, when we are
aware of all the problems.

-- juippis