5 ms·

It it true that patches are dropped or forgotten? Or is this a personal opinion?

• brunosutic 12y ago
  It's true.. a lot of the patches are forgotten unless the submitter periodically "pings" Bram (the maintianer) about it. The vim development model (patches + mailing list) has been pretty frustrating for some people. That's one of the reasons why NeoVim was forked.
  • reidrac 12y ago
    Is it frustrating because of the patches + mailing list or because the maintainer ignores them? Because pull requests can be ignored as well, although it is true that they're more visible than a mail in a mailing list archive.
    • brandonwamboldt 12y ago
      Both IMO. Patches + mailing list isn't an ideal medium for code changes, and it's not as easy to quickly browse a list of patches that haven't been merged yet. GitHub lets you update patches easily (and see the updated patch), drop comments inline in a patch (very useful for code review), and tag patches (extremely useful for large projects). Having to go through the extra hassle of a mailing list just to have the maintainer ignore them sucks. Another benefit of GitHub is that users affected by an issue that has been patched but not merged can just fork the repo and merge the PR themselves and use that (I've done that in multiple cases). Mailing lists aren't as easy for this.
      • jessaustin 12y ago
        Patches + mailing list isn't an ideal medium for code changes, and it's not as easy to quickly browse a list of patches that haven't been merged yet. This is true, which I discovered while attempting to contribute to git itself. git's development uses this model, which probably means something, even if I can't figure it out.
• ggreer 12y ago
  It's true if you're not one of the regular contributors. Even small patches for things like syntax highlighting seem to languish[1][2]. For stuff that requires feedback from Bram, sometimes there's just no response[3]. Sometimes it just takes a bunch of prodding from multiple users to get a patch merged[4]. Sometimes even that isn't effective[5]. I didn't have to look hard to find these examples. I just scrolled through vim-dev looking for "patch" next to an unfamiliar name. This is a common problem with mailing lists: old things fade into oblivion whether or not they've been dealt with. Not so with GitHub's pull requests. PRs stick around until someone closes or merges them. That one difference makes it much harder for contributions to slip through the cracks. 1. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/iB2YYel67io/SBHYHpSMvmAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/iB2YYel67io/SBHYHpSM... 2. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/UTOY6V6UCkk/-0lqupnch9cJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/UTOY6V6UCkk/-0lqupnc... 3. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/0It1ZTos_QY/63Xc9NrTxaAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/0It1ZTos_QY/63Xc9NrT... 4. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/WeBBjkXE8H8/MRLPPMjVyYkJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/WeBBjkXE8H8/MRLPPMjV... 5. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/kG3Qaz8M9kw/YyZDzwkcJMQJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/kG3Qaz8M9kw/YyZDzwkc...
  • arcticfox 12y ago
    My goodness. I'm shocked anyone is motivated enough to even get stuff through that process.
    • iterati 12y ago
      Which is why neovim exists now.
      • sfk 12y ago
        Which practically no one actually uses.
        • sfk 12y ago
          I truly wonder what kind of idiot downvotes this. Pure propaganda.