2 ms·

Is there something to back up the claim that you must use git and a popular bug tracker to get any community involvement?

by clarry 12y ago

falcolas 12y ago
git, mercurial, svn, cvs... different names for the same tools and challenges.
- clarry 12y ago
  > But if a potential contributor wants to fork your code, you'd better understand pull requests, branching and merging, and a whole series of other operations that might or might not have counterparts in the SCMs you've used. I don't think these tools are all the same, at least as traditionally used. And you don't have to (ab)use all their features. Also, you don't have to use these tools at all. But the original author more or less claims that you have to use git to get any community involvement.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    I read it as github being the most popular example of that type of tool. If not github, then SourceForge, or code.google.com, or launchpad, or... the list goes on. And whatever community you ascribe to, you'll have to learn how to operate within it to get community contributions.
    - clarry 12y ago
      I guess such communities exist, but it looks weird to me. It shouldn't be like that. I mean, your project's community should consist of people who use or are interested in using your code. Whether it be hosted on github, launchpad, your own yourproject.com or another server capable of hosting the project. Hosting it is technical details; people should come to the project for what it is, not for where it is hosted at. Therefore the community shouldn't be "github community" or "sourceforge community" or whatever. Or did you mean communities such as "git users", "cvs users" and so on? I think that's still the wrong way to think of it. It sounds like a religious cult formed around specific tools. They're just tools. I shouldn't need to ascribe to "vim community" hosted on "vimhub" even if I wrote my software using vim (I don't).
      - ternaryoperator 12y ago
        Sure, but when you set up the project, wherever you host it, you're going to have to choose an SCM before you have any community. If you want to provide the least friction for potential contributors, you'll want to to use the SCM most commonly used today in open source, namely Git. Add'l note: Other hosts, BitBucket, Google Code, etc. also offer Git hosting. So, yes, choose whatever host you want, but choose and SCM that will make it easy for folks to contribute.
rmetzler 12y ago
If you want the community to be involved with your code you should use what the community use. For a lot of languages today this is git and GitHub.
- clarry 12y ago
  But is the community so narrow-minded today that it won't bother if your project doesn't use their favorite hosting provider and version control? Before this git religion, I think it was normal for everyone to accept and live with whatever tools the project they want to get involved with used. And there was more variety as to where projects would host; certainly sourceforge and the like were popular, but so were projects that hosted themselves.

Is there something to back up the claim that you must use git and a popular bug tracker to get any community involvement?

by clarry 12y ago

Is there something to back up the claim that you must use git and a popular bug tracker to get any community involvement?

falcolas 12y ago

git, mercurial, svn, cvs... different names for the same tools and challenges.

clarry 12y ago
> But if a potential contributor wants to fork your code, you'd better understand pull requests, branching and merging, and a whole series of other operations that might or might not have counterparts in the SCMs you've used. I don't think these tools are all the same, at least as traditionally used. And you don't have to (ab)use all their features. Also, you don't have to use these tools at all. But the original author more or less claims that you have to use git to get any community involvement.
- falcolas 12y ago
  I read it as github being the most popular example of that type of tool. If not github, then SourceForge, or code.google.com, or launchpad, or... the list goes on. And whatever community you ascribe to, you'll have to learn how to operate within it to get community contributions.
  - clarry 12y ago
    I guess such communities exist, but it looks weird to me. It shouldn't be like that. I mean, your project's community should consist of people who use or are interested in using your code. Whether it be hosted on github, launchpad, your own yourproject.com or another server capable of hosting the project. Hosting it is technical details; people should come to the project for what it is, not for where it is hosted at. Therefore the community shouldn't be "github community" or "sourceforge community" or whatever. Or did you mean communities such as "git users", "cvs users" and so on? I think that's still the wrong way to think of it. It sounds like a religious cult formed around specific tools. They're just tools. I shouldn't need to ascribe to "vim community" hosted on "vimhub" even if I wrote my software using vim (I don't).
    - ternaryoperator 12y ago
      Sure, but when you set up the project, wherever you host it, you're going to have to choose an SCM before you have any community. If you want to provide the least friction for potential contributors, you'll want to to use the SCM most commonly used today in open source, namely Git. Add'l note: Other hosts, BitBucket, Google Code, etc. also offer Git hosting. So, yes, choose whatever host you want, but choose and SCM that will make it easy for folks to contribute.

rmetzler 12y ago

If you want the community to be involved with your code you should use what the community use. For a lot of languages today this is git and GitHub.

clarry 12y ago
But is the community so narrow-minded today that it won't bother if your project doesn't use their favorite hosting provider and version control? Before this git religion, I think it was normal for everyone to accept and live with whatever tools the project they want to get involved with used. And there was more variety as to where projects would host; certainly sourceforge and the like were popular, but so were projects that hosted themselves.