3 ms·
Its not comparing the same thing I think, commits to a repo and diffs sent over email, and even if it was, its not really the same thing anyway... Kernel devel
by walkingolof 9y ago
Its not comparing the same thing I think, commits to a repo and diffs sent over email, and even if it was, its not really the same thing anyway...
Kernel development seems to progress fine, I'm pretty sure if there was a problem, Linus would have made some effort to change it, just like the whole source control thing that ended up becoming Git.
- jasode 9y ago>Kernel development seems to progress fine, I'm not claiming that there's a bottleneck in kernel commits. (I'd guess human code reviews checking quality is the ultimate bottleneck.) I'm saying that using emails as "building blocks to reconstruct an pseudo ALM" instead of using an actual special-purpose ALM -- is the only realistic workflow that would be accepted by the disparate Linux community who don't work for a single employer. (If you're a single company employing all 4000 of Linux kernel programmers, you could impose an ALM tool be mandatory for code reviews, assigning work, tagging bug reports, etc.) Discussing positive bullet points of email ... even though each bullet point is true actually obscures the underlying reason the devs won't use an ALM.
- wmf 9y agoIt seems like that argument cuts both ways; what about developers who refuse to use the email-based process?
- jasode 9y ago>; what about developers who refuse to use the email-based process? I guess I don't understand your question. In Linux, the email-as-the-workflow[1] has been agreed upon from Linux Torvald and his lieutenants all the way down. I suppose that if a one refused to use email-based-workflow, they'd have to find a Linux kernel maintainer to be a champion for their proposed changes and submit them on their behalf. (Is this a common scenario? I don't know.) If a rebel Linux kernel programmer insisted on staging changes for review in Gerritt/JIRA/github/etc, he's going to be isolated in an island because he's not part of the agreed-upon workflow: emails. [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst#14-the-canonical-patch-format https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...
- wmf 9y agoIf Linus declared that everyone must use, say, Gitlab from now on, some Linux developers might leave. But developers who don't use email may never start working on Linux. That's why it cuts both ways: either option alienates some developers.