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Why kernel development still uses email

lwn.net

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Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#11

Post by viraptor »

blaisio wrote: post #8

So I get and agree with what he's saying about how GitHub duplicated email, but as a millennial who uses Vim, I find GitHub much more intuitive and useful than sending patches via email. In general, I disagree with the issues he has with GitHub - most of them are wishy washy disagreements that could easily be solved by adding things to GitHub or using a chrome extension. IMO the only real, logical reason they need to…

> that could easily be solved by adding things to GitHub or using a chrome extension

I don't believe "adding things to GitHub" is easy unless you're the GitHub product manager. Also requiring some extensions would mean auto-verifying all the requirements on submitted PRs and half of them ending up with "redo it our way and submit again".

Not impossible, but likely annoying to contributors and spammy for anyone receiving PRs.

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#12

Post by vasilia »

blaisio wrote: post #8

So I get and agree with what he's saying about how GitHub duplicated email, but as a millennial who uses Vim, I find GitHub much more intuitive and useful than sending patches via email. In general, I disagree with the issues he has with GitHub - most of them are wishy washy disagreements that could easily be solved by adding things to GitHub or using a chrome extension. IMO the only real, logical reason they need to…

Just try to use GitHub Enterprise for 400 or more users. You get a bare metal image of the virtual machine with no replication, load balancing, etc. Nothing more for a huge price. I don't know how they scaling public version.

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#13

Post by notacoward »

As always, it's worth pointing out that this is just about the Linux kernel. Different scale, different developer community, different code structure, different testing/CI methodology (i.e. practically none) than just about every other project out there. Email works for them - great. Other things work for other people - also great. Theirs is one interesting data point, but that's all it is.

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#14

Post by taeric »

Klathmon wrote: post #9
na85 wrote: post #5

I find the idea that a technology should be replaced simply because it is old to be very irksome. Those developers out there blindly contributing to the trend of replacing "tried and true" with "new and shiny" really need to take a step back and gain some perspective. Email works great for the vast, vast majority of users.

While I agree, the opposite is also an issue. Developers which either look down upon anything new as "pointless" or in some cases actively try to stop improvements. Looking at the kernel dev system, it works great, but it has its share of problems. I've never even thought about contributing to the kernel because of the work involved to just submit a patch, that process can be improved. Making it easier for newcomers,…

I didn't realize the kernel had a large process to submit. Any particular part scare you off?

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#16

Post by ludamad »

"Some systems, like Outlook, will uniformly corrupt patches; as a result, companies doing kernel development tend to keep a Linux machine that they can use to send patches in a corner somewhere." Isn't a Linux desktop also convenient for the development itself?

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#17

Post by nxc18 »

Email is an amazing tool. I don't understand the rush to get rid of it.

It is a free standard with many implementations on both the client and server. It is exceptionally easy to manage email. Many servers have great systems for categorizing emails and storing them long-term. Email is fast. Everyone has one.

There is this weird myth that Email magically kills productivity while Slack and GitHub don't. I never understood this - slack and GitHub have a lot more distraction with their social media components.

I see the day coming soon when in order to work with other people I'll need to find and install one of the x tens of IM clients. The day when I can't find anything because it is in a million places and its real hard to search 10 years of conversation when messages don't have basic metadata like a subject. :(

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#18

Post by userbinator »

Klathmon wrote: post #9
na85 wrote: post #5

I find the idea that a technology should be replaced simply because it is old to be very irksome. Those developers out there blindly contributing to the trend of replacing "tried and true" with "new and shiny" really need to take a step back and gain some perspective. Email works great for the vast, vast majority of users.

While I agree, the opposite is also an issue. Developers which either look down upon anything new as "pointless" or in some cases actively try to stop improvements. Looking at the kernel dev system, it works great, but it has its share of problems. I've never even thought about contributing to the kernel because of the work involved to just submit a patch, that process can be improved. Making it easier for newcomers,…

I think it's a deliberate barrier to entry: they're basically saying "if you can't be bothered to learn how to do it, we don't want your contributions."

Linus occasionally rants about some of the crap that gets in, and I have a feeling he certainly doesn't want more, which would happen if the barrier was lowered. Here's a somewhat recent example:

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#19

Post by Bahamut »

DSMan195276 wrote: post #7

I think it's worth adding, in the age of git sending patches by email is easier then ever - it definitely shows that git was developed by Linus with the kernel's development in mind. There is literally a `git format-patch` command which spits out a full formatted email (or emails) of your various commits, which can then be sent to a mail client to be edited and sent out. Or even easier, just use git to send the patch…

If you use github, you can also utilize git am to pull changes locally - i.e. add .patch to the end of a pull request url, navigate to the resulting url, copy the new url, then run curl | git am -3

Re: Why kernel development still uses email

#20

Post by willismichael »

taeric wrote: post #6

The number of systems we have created to try and move collaboration off of email is hilariously large. Between email and lisp, is there any other system that you can find in any sufficiently large system?

Also hilarious is the fact that every single one of them will provide email notification when you're offline.
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