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I seem to be in the minority, but I found Phabricator to be a very unpleasant code review experience. Because it doesn’t speak git natively, it would frequently

I seem to be in the minority, but I found Phabricator to be a very unpleasant code review experience. Because it doesn’t speak git natively, it would frequently just spew commits from an arbitrary branch into PRs, for no apparent reason. And because reviews weren’t based on actual git branches, people could throw patches that you couldn’t actually build into it. Awful, awful thing.

encryptluks2 4y ago
Is that different than JIRA? I always thought Phabricator was just awesome as a JIRA alternative
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Phabricator is a whole suite of integrated web-based software development tools: * Differential, a code review tool * Diffusion, a repository browser * Herald, a change monitoring tool * Maniphest, a bug tracker * Phriction, a wiki
  - Rexxar 4y ago
    They clearly should have called the two first tools Dipherential and Diphusion
    - xani_ 4y ago
      The guy with speech impediment was on vacation when they named those
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Thank you. I'm aware of that but was just mentioning it is awesome as an alternative to JIRA alone.
    - cpeterso 4y ago
      Sorry! I misinterpreted “just awesome as a Jira alternative” as “only awesome as” instead of “very awesome as”. :)
- chii 4y ago
  jira is a project tracking tool, and has no native code review capabilities. It can be plugged into various suites of software that does have code review capabilities (such as bitbucket (both cloud and on-premises)), and display links to those software suites.
bogota 4y ago
You need to buy into the phab workflow which is diff based not branch based. Once you accept that the experience is awesome. For many people they don’t understand git enough unfortunately to appreciate the workflow not that it doesn’t have its flaws but it has worked amazingly on both large and small teams for me
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  >You need to buy into the phab workflow which is diff based not branch based. What do you mean by this?
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Quick overview of the differences: https://gist.github.com/StevenACoffman/cbb8e95960d2daac2077b0f163f99929 https://gist.github.com/StevenACoffman/cbb8e95960d2daac2077b...
  - 10000truths 4y ago
    Phabricator works with patches, not branches. Kind of like how Linux kernel development works, except instead of attaching a patch file in an email and sending to a mailing list, the patch gets uploaded via a CLI tool (arc) and reviewed in a web interface.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - gorgoiler 4y ago
    When you do code review, you are approving a patch: the difference between the old code and the new code. With GitHub / Gitlab you push a branch and tell the tool to generate the diff by comparing two branches. With Phabricator you make the patch locally and push the patch directly for review. There is fooling to help you do this, as well as to pull and apply patches. This decouples Phabricator from your VCS tool and is partly a legacy of a time when Facebook had some engineers (and the central repo) using Subversion, and others using git. Even when everyone is using git, there are still 1001 different workflows which people use, so Phabricator ignores all that and zeroes in on the relevant bit: the code change you are proposing. It is more precise, imho. At its heart, code review is a human process for discussing the merits of a document that happens to be structured in the form of @@, + and - symbols. You can bolt other tools onto the side of it for CI/CD, linting, etc., but the human readable code change and social interaction parts are still front and centre.

encryptluks2 4y ago

Is that different than JIRA? I always thought Phabricator was just awesome as a JIRA alternative

cpeterso 4y ago
Phabricator is a whole suite of integrated web-based software development tools: * Differential, a code review tool * Diffusion, a repository browser * Herald, a change monitoring tool * Maniphest, a bug tracker * Phriction, a wiki
- Rexxar 4y ago
  They clearly should have called the two first tools Dipherential and Diphusion
  - xani_ 4y ago
    The guy with speech impediment was on vacation when they named those
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Thank you. I'm aware of that but was just mentioning it is awesome as an alternative to JIRA alone.
  - cpeterso 4y ago
    Sorry! I misinterpreted “just awesome as a Jira alternative” as “only awesome as” instead of “very awesome as”. :)
chii 4y ago
jira is a project tracking tool, and has no native code review capabilities. It can be plugged into various suites of software that does have code review capabilities (such as bitbucket (both cloud and on-premises)), and display links to those software suites.

bogota 4y ago

You need to buy into the phab workflow which is diff based not branch based. Once you accept that the experience is awesome. For many people they don’t understand git enough unfortunately to appreciate the workflow not that it doesn’t have its flaws but it has worked amazingly on both large and small teams for me

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
>You need to buy into the phab workflow which is diff based not branch based. What do you mean by this?
- capableweb 4y ago
  Quick overview of the differences: https://gist.github.com/StevenACoffman/cbb8e95960d2daac2077b0f163f99929 https://gist.github.com/StevenACoffman/cbb8e95960d2daac2077b...
- 10000truths 4y ago
  Phabricator works with patches, not branches. Kind of like how Linux kernel development works, except instead of attaching a patch file in an email and sending to a mailing list, the patch gets uploaded via a CLI tool (arc) and reviewed in a web interface.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  When you do code review, you are approving a patch: the difference between the old code and the new code. With GitHub / Gitlab you push a branch and tell the tool to generate the diff by comparing two branches. With Phabricator you make the patch locally and push the patch directly for review. There is fooling to help you do this, as well as to pull and apply patches. This decouples Phabricator from your VCS tool and is partly a legacy of a time when Facebook had some engineers (and the central repo) using Subversion, and others using git. Even when everyone is using git, there are still 1001 different workflows which people use, so Phabricator ignores all that and zeroes in on the relevant bit: the code change you are proposing. It is more precise, imho. At its heart, code review is a human process for discussing the merits of a document that happens to be structured in the form of @@, + and - symbols. You can bolt other tools onto the side of it for CI/CD, linting, etc., but the human readable code change and social interaction parts are still front and centre.