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Yes! I quite like the idea of "centralizing" development on GitHub, or similar services. It makes it much easier for everyone to fork, test, make a pull reques

Yes! I quite like the idea of "centralizing" development on GitHub, or similar services. It makes it much easier for everyone to fork, test, make a pull request, merge, etc.. For example, one reason why I gave up contributing to OpenWrt was their absolutely legacy contribution system [1], which required devs to submit code diff patches via email (good luck not messing up the formatting with a modern client) on a mailing list. It took me an hour to submit a patch for three lines of code. It seems like Python wasn't much different. [2] [1] https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/SubmittingPatches#a1.Creatingapatch https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/SubmittingPatches#a1.Creatingap... [2] https://docs.python.org/devguide/patch.html https://docs.python.org/devguide/patch.html

corndoge 10y ago
The emailed patch model is still incredibly popular and combined with an application such as Patchwork remains efficient. good luck not messing up the formatting with a modern client $ git send-email GitHub is easier to get started with but both methods have their benefits. I personally prefer GitHub but don't have problems contributing to projects that use the emailed patch model.
- laurentdc 10y ago
  > $ git send-email Ah, thanks. If I only had known! :) Maybe someone at OpenWrt (with edit access to the Wiki and such) could write a simple script for git send-email with a wrapper for the [PATCH] [architecture] what subject and Signed-off-by thing. Would speed things up quite a bit imho, especially for newcomers. I see quite a few "not formatted properly" rejections.
  - ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
    It is up to you to put "[architecture] what" into your commit message. Signed-off-by is a legal procedure, it should not be automated, you should do "git commit --signoff" yourself. "[PATCH]" is added by "git send-email". If you don't want to setup your client properly and keep using some GUI or Web client, you can format your patch with "git format-patch" and submit whatever files it produces. OpenWrt rightfully expects you to read at least "man giteveryday", which is titled "A useful minimum set of commands for Everyday Git" and includes "format-patch" and "send-email" in "INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPER (PARTICIPANT)" section.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    Signed-off-by is automatically added to commits if you add "-s" to the git commit command. In addition, git format-patch (and thus git send-email) already adds [PATCH X/Y] to the subject line (prepended to the short commit message). Which part of this needs to be better scripted?
    - fake-name 10y ago
      The entire part where this shit happens using email.
      - cyphar 10y ago
        % git send-email Wow. So hard. So many characters.
    - jwilk 10y ago
      Adding -s every time is too much work, so I added this to my git config instead: [format] signOff = true
      - ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
        Just don't add it to global config
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
LeanderK 10y ago
i don't like centralising development on github, but i welcome the competition for more user-friendly systems. I think the pressure is increasing for other service to provide an equal experience both for exploring an contributing to a project.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
  https://gitea.io/ https://gitea.io/
- tyteen4a03 10y ago
  The closest competition to GitHub seems to be GitLab at the moment, but I heard it's slow to some users. The UI also felt a bit "off" to me (primarily because I'm used to having code, not the README, as the index page of a repo) I have my private projects on GitLab because it's free. (BitBucket before that; good riddance)
  - cderwin 10y ago
    I definitely wouldn't say gitlab is slow in the empirical sense, but browsing repos is definitely a bit more sluggish than github. Maybe it's just more noticeable since it's an SPA. I say that as a someone who uses gitlab for all of my personal projects.
    - gulaschbrot 10y ago
      My university uses gitlab and it feels very slow. Pushing changes takes 5-10x longer than anywhere else, even from the university network. (compared to github or even my server sitting at home on a normal home DSL connection)
ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
Centralizing around proprietary software is not a good idea generally. Git is distributed, so when GitHub goes down, every developer has a backup of entire history. However, issues are lost forever. Python does not use "issues" feature for good. One way to avoid email without centralization is setting up Gerrit. That is how Ring [1] and LineageOS (former CyanogenMod) [2] manage their "pull requests". Still, being able to submit patches via email is an absolutely necessary skill for everyone who considers himself a hacker. Lack of it makes you unable to contribute to many great projects, such as all suckless [3] projects and Linux itself. [1] https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ [2] https://review.lineageos.org/ https://review.lineageos.org/ [3] http://suckless.org/ http://suckless.org/
- fake-name 10y ago
  Anything is better then e-mail based systems. The discoverability, browsability, and useability of something with actual markup and design is infinitely better then e-mail. I've tried several times to make submissions to several e-mail based projects, never with any success. At the same time, I've had zero issues contributing to a dozen or so github hosted projects. E-mail systems are a shitshow. First, you generally have to join a mailing list, which is regularly broken, or requires someone somewhere to manually acknowledge your membership. Then, you have to figure out how they want shit formatted, figure out how to generate a diff (I've been using SVN for 8+ years, git for ~3 years, and have never had to deal with diff files!), send an e-mail, find the mailing list shat itself and troubleshoot, try again, etc.... Basically, e-mail is the death of any sort of low-effort contribution. If you're starting a new project, and chose a mailing list, you're probably excluding a huge quantity of potential contributors. If there's a project where I want to make a few-line change or minor enhancement, and it's on github, I'll generally PR it back into the original. If it's somewhere else, or requires another account, there's no way I'm going to spend the effort. Plus, just reading mailing lists is a fucking disaster. Literally no mailing list host I know of lets you just view a complete topic thread in simple chronological order on ONE PAGE. They all operate on a per-message response-tree structure, so just reading the discussion is a huge pain in the ass. E-mail is basically dying among younger people, including the ones that code, and with good reason. For actual forum-type discussions, it's a completely shit solution.
newman314 10y ago
It's even worse with ddwrt. =( I've pretty much given up hope that any of these *-wrt devs take security or dev seriously.
aljones 10y ago
I agree, but there are risks in using a proprietary platform for this. See sourceforge.
zeveb 10y ago
> good luck not messing up the formatting with a modern client I wonder how 'modern' a client can be if it can't even post source code properly.

corndoge 10y ago

The emailed patch model is still incredibly popular and combined with an application such as Patchwork remains efficient. good luck not messing up the formatting with a modern client $ git send-email GitHub is easier to get started with but both methods have their benefits. I personally prefer GitHub but don't have problems contributing to projects that use the emailed patch model.

laurentdc 10y ago
> $ git send-email Ah, thanks. If I only had known! :) Maybe someone at OpenWrt (with edit access to the Wiki and such) could write a simple script for git send-email with a wrapper for the [PATCH] [architecture] what subject and Signed-off-by thing. Would speed things up quite a bit imho, especially for newcomers. I see quite a few "not formatted properly" rejections.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
  It is up to you to put "[architecture] what" into your commit message. Signed-off-by is a legal procedure, it should not be automated, you should do "git commit --signoff" yourself. "[PATCH]" is added by "git send-email". If you don't want to setup your client properly and keep using some GUI or Web client, you can format your patch with "git format-patch" and submit whatever files it produces. OpenWrt rightfully expects you to read at least "man giteveryday", which is titled "A useful minimum set of commands for Everyday Git" and includes "format-patch" and "send-email" in "INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPER (PARTICIPANT)" section.
- cyphar 10y ago
  Signed-off-by is automatically added to commits if you add "-s" to the git commit command. In addition, git format-patch (and thus git send-email) already adds [PATCH X/Y] to the subject line (prepended to the short commit message). Which part of this needs to be better scripted?
  - fake-name 10y ago
    The entire part where this shit happens using email.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      % git send-email Wow. So hard. So many characters.
  - jwilk 10y ago
    Adding -s every time is too much work, so I added this to my git config instead: [format] signOff = true
    - ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
      Just don't add it to global config

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

LeanderK 10y ago

i don't like centralising development on github, but i welcome the competition for more user-friendly systems. I think the pressure is increasing for other service to provide an equal experience both for exploring an contributing to a project.

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
https://gitea.io/ https://gitea.io/
tyteen4a03 10y ago
The closest competition to GitHub seems to be GitLab at the moment, but I heard it's slow to some users. The UI also felt a bit "off" to me (primarily because I'm used to having code, not the README, as the index page of a repo) I have my private projects on GitLab because it's free. (BitBucket before that; good riddance)
- cderwin 10y ago
  I definitely wouldn't say gitlab is slow in the empirical sense, but browsing repos is definitely a bit more sluggish than github. Maybe it's just more noticeable since it's an SPA. I say that as a someone who uses gitlab for all of my personal projects.
  - gulaschbrot 10y ago
    My university uses gitlab and it feels very slow. Pushing changes takes 5-10x longer than anywhere else, even from the university network. (compared to github or even my server sitting at home on a normal home DSL connection)

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago

Centralizing around proprietary software is not a good idea generally. Git is distributed, so when GitHub goes down, every developer has a backup of entire history. However, issues are lost forever. Python does not use "issues" feature for good. One way to avoid email without centralization is setting up Gerrit. That is how Ring [1] and LineageOS (former CyanogenMod) [2] manage their "pull requests". Still, being able to submit patches via email is an absolutely necessary skill for everyone who considers himself a hacker. Lack of it makes you unable to contribute to many great projects, such as all suckless [3] projects and Linux itself. [1] https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ [2] https://review.lineageos.org/ https://review.lineageos.org/ [3] http://suckless.org/ http://suckless.org/

fake-name 10y ago
Anything is better then e-mail based systems. The discoverability, browsability, and useability of something with actual markup and design is infinitely better then e-mail. I've tried several times to make submissions to several e-mail based projects, never with any success. At the same time, I've had zero issues contributing to a dozen or so github hosted projects. E-mail systems are a shitshow. First, you generally have to join a mailing list, which is regularly broken, or requires someone somewhere to manually acknowledge your membership. Then, you have to figure out how they want shit formatted, figure out how to generate a diff (I've been using SVN for 8+ years, git for ~3 years, and have never had to deal with diff files!), send an e-mail, find the mailing list shat itself and troubleshoot, try again, etc.... Basically, e-mail is the death of any sort of low-effort contribution. If you're starting a new project, and chose a mailing list, you're probably excluding a huge quantity of potential contributors. If there's a project where I want to make a few-line change or minor enhancement, and it's on github, I'll generally PR it back into the original. If it's somewhere else, or requires another account, there's no way I'm going to spend the effort. Plus, just reading mailing lists is a fucking disaster. Literally no mailing list host I know of lets you just view a complete topic thread in simple chronological order on ONE PAGE. They all operate on a per-message response-tree structure, so just reading the discussion is a huge pain in the ass. E-mail is basically dying among younger people, including the ones that code, and with good reason. For actual forum-type discussions, it's a completely shit solution.

newman314 10y ago

It's even worse with ddwrt. =( I've pretty much given up hope that any of these *-wrt devs take security or dev seriously.

aljones 10y ago

I agree, but there are risks in using a proprietary platform for this. See sourceforge.

zeveb 10y ago

> good luck not messing up the formatting with a modern client I wonder how 'modern' a client can be if it can't even post source code properly.