3 ms·

Can only speak for myself, but I didn't understand enough context to get much out of the site. I'm used git for small, personal collaborations, so I don't know

by bo1024 8y ago

Can only speak for myself, but I didn't understand enough context to get much out of the site. I'm used git for small, personal collaborations, so I don't know why it sends email or when you would want it to do that. I don't know what a "patch" means here and why you use email with them. If I'm not your target audience, then that's fine, but it might be helpful to have some background on this. Otherwise, the site and layout look great to me. It is a little tricky to have step 1 be installation, because someone who just wants to find out more without installing might stop there (I was a little deterred, then I just picked a random OS and clicked through the instructions).

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
>I'm used git for small, personal collaborations This is a great reason to use email! You don't need a platform at all, you can use the tools presented in this tutorial to email your work directly to your collaborators. Outside of that, email is used for collaboration with many large and important projects, such as Linux, PostgreSQL, and git itself. I have some writings about why I think this workflow is nice: https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distribute... https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/02/Email-driven-git.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/02/Email-driven-git.html (forgive the formatting on the latter, fix is being deployed now)
- bo1024 8y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I'll explain why I'm still confused/unsure what is going on, hope it is useful feedback. My understanding of git is that there is a server, and users push/pull to the server. So from an initial look at everything you provided, it sounded to me like git-send-email gives people email notifications to know what has been changed on the server, for example. I don't know what "email-driven workflow" means and that was my best guess. But from someone else's reply, it sounds like you are discussing an alternative to the server model, where there is no server at all and pushes and pulls are communicated completely via email. This seems consistent with your 2018-07-02 post, but honestly I didn't really get it from there the first time. Is it correct?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    That's right. git stores all of the data that could be on the server on your local machine. Every clone of a git repository contains the full history of that repo. git send-email allows you to send commits to other people over email.
    - bo1024 8y ago
      Okay, thanks! I am finally getting it.
  - rgoulter 8y ago
    > My understanding of git is that there is a server, and users push/pull to the server. Git is a distributed VCS and so doesn't need a (centralised) server to share code. Sites like GitHub, GitLab or SourceHut let you host a git repository that you can push/pull from. It's a convenient way of sharing code, and collaborating with others. But you can also apply changes to a repo using patches prepared by email. > ....where there is no server at all and pushes and pulls are communicated completely via email. I'd emphasise that changes to a repo can come from diffs or patches as well, not just pushes/pulls from another repository. FWIW, Git book has details about how one might make use of patches received by email. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Maintaining-a-Project#_patches_from_email https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Maintaining-a... https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-C%3A-Git-Commands-Email https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-C%3A-Git-Commands-Em...
treve 8y ago
The idea is that in order for multiple people to collaborate, most of the time you will need a service like Github, Bitbucket or perhaps something you can run yourself. This is a different workflow. Instead of staying in sync via a hosted service, people stay in sync and send 'pull requests' via email.
- bo1024 8y ago
  Thanks, this response starts to remove some of my confusion. So it's git without the server, communicating pushes over email instead. (I guess you automatically pull whatever is in the emails you get?)
  - epse 8y ago
    You get a patch file as an attachment to the email, which you can then apply to any branch on your local copy that you'd like.
- NikkiA 8y ago
  git itself includes at least 2 methods of running that server itself.... ``git daemon`` is entirely self-contained and permits the git:// protocol for clones/push/pull etc ``git instaweb`` will piggyback a simple git web service on top of a number of httpd's including lighttpd. I'm sure that git's homepage used to use instaweb for it's repo access, but it seems they've switched to github :(
cjslep 8y ago
Before GitHub and other UIs exposing the "Git*" experience of merge/pull requests, etc there was only git and email. I think the author of this is the same one who has pushed back against ForgeFed and is now tackling some of the criticisms shared in response to his "git is already decentralized" piece (namely, git over email being too hard or not well known enough).

by bo1024 8y ago

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

>I'm used git for small, personal collaborations This is a great reason to use email! You don't need a platform at all, you can use the tools presented in this tutorial to email your work directly to your collaborators. Outside of that, email is used for collaboration with many large and important projects, such as Linux, PostgreSQL, and git itself. I have some writings about why I think this workflow is nice: https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distribute... https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/02/Email-driven-git.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/02/Email-driven-git.html (forgive the formatting on the latter, fix is being deployed now)

bo1024 8y ago
Thanks for the reply. I'll explain why I'm still confused/unsure what is going on, hope it is useful feedback. My understanding of git is that there is a server, and users push/pull to the server. So from an initial look at everything you provided, it sounded to me like git-send-email gives people email notifications to know what has been changed on the server, for example. I don't know what "email-driven workflow" means and that was my best guess. But from someone else's reply, it sounds like you are discussing an alternative to the server model, where there is no server at all and pushes and pulls are communicated completely via email. This seems consistent with your 2018-07-02 post, but honestly I didn't really get it from there the first time. Is it correct?
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  That's right. git stores all of the data that could be on the server on your local machine. Every clone of a git repository contains the full history of that repo. git send-email allows you to send commits to other people over email.
  - bo1024 8y ago
    Okay, thanks! I am finally getting it.
- rgoulter 8y ago
  > My understanding of git is that there is a server, and users push/pull to the server. Git is a distributed VCS and so doesn't need a (centralised) server to share code. Sites like GitHub, GitLab or SourceHut let you host a git repository that you can push/pull from. It's a convenient way of sharing code, and collaborating with others. But you can also apply changes to a repo using patches prepared by email. > ....where there is no server at all and pushes and pulls are communicated completely via email. I'd emphasise that changes to a repo can come from diffs or patches as well, not just pushes/pulls from another repository. FWIW, Git book has details about how one might make use of patches received by email. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Maintaining-a-Project#_patches_from_email https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Maintaining-a... https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-C%3A-Git-Commands-Email https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-C%3A-Git-Commands-Em...

treve 8y ago

The idea is that in order for multiple people to collaborate, most of the time you will need a service like Github, Bitbucket or perhaps something you can run yourself. This is a different workflow. Instead of staying in sync via a hosted service, people stay in sync and send 'pull requests' via email.

bo1024 8y ago
Thanks, this response starts to remove some of my confusion. So it's git without the server, communicating pushes over email instead. (I guess you automatically pull whatever is in the emails you get?)
- epse 8y ago
  You get a patch file as an attachment to the email, which you can then apply to any branch on your local copy that you'd like.
NikkiA 8y ago
git itself includes at least 2 methods of running that server itself.... ``git daemon`` is entirely self-contained and permits the git:// protocol for clones/push/pull etc ``git instaweb`` will piggyback a simple git web service on top of a number of httpd's including lighttpd. I'm sure that git's homepage used to use instaweb for it's repo access, but it seems they've switched to github :(

cjslep 8y ago

Before GitHub and other UIs exposing the "Git*" experience of merge/pull requests, etc there was only git and email. I think the author of this is the same one who has pushed back against ForgeFed and is now tackling some of the criticisms shared in response to his "git is already decentralized" piece (namely, git over email being too hard or not well known enough).