Earlier quoted context omitted.
Configuring git send-email is trivial, definitively faster than creating an account at some web UI from a "source forge" – it's literally setting a handful of properties in the `.gitconfig` – and those are not specific to a project, but just your mail server settings you can reuse them for any project that accept patches over mailing lists. And using it for a project that accepts this workflow is such a joy, no need…
> Configuring git send-email is trivial The linked article is literally a multi-step process of arcane terminal commands that differ by operating system. You may think it's easy, but it's definitionally not trivial.
Email and Git = <3
231–240 of 265 posts
Re: Email and Git = <3
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> not only drive away a significant number of potential contributors, It drives away the kind of people who have little patience for technology problems and little patience for learning new things. I don't want those kind of people working on e.g. Git. Git needs people who have lots of patience for technology problems and lots of patience for learning new things.
No, it drives away people who don't want to develop in vim or emacs and prefer to use modern tools instead.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
“needlessly graphical” requires a citation when it’s clear that if you use a web GUI for this you address a market of potential contributors that is three to six orders of magnitude larger. srht is really designed for (and thus only really useful for) lone wolf developers who collaborate rarely, if ever, and with a very small number of collaborators who collaborate infrequently. It is not built for large teams with c…
Some of the largest and most important software is developed over email, e.g. Linux, QEMU, Firefox, etc... Don't make the mistake thinking that email doesn't scale. In fact, for most teams, the opposite is true.
Windows and Office and AWS and GCP dwarf these foss projects.
There is a reason that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple don’t use email to collaborate on software.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#234Re: Email and Git = <3
#235I appreciate the effort here, but after learning the workflow and having to get all this set up on a few computers, having to configure git send-mail is honestly just needlessly annoying and absurd. Organizations that insist on using workflows like git send-mail and mailing lists not only drive away a significant number of potential contributors, but they also form a weirdly religious culture that fetishizes needless…
It really kills the fun when contributing to any FOSS project that fetishizes these tools and holds them up as some kind of proof of hacker cred. I've given up. The latency is too high and the tools are terrible.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really kills the fun when contributing to any FOSS project that fetishizes these tools and holds them up as some kind of proof of hacker cred. I've given up. The latency is too high and the tools are terrible.
“Want to contribute? Subscribe to our mailing list that sends a hundred emails a day.” Nope.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard agree! I think the success of Github's PR system over Git + email workflows has proved itself quite well through sheer adoption numbers.
The largest open-source software projects in the world don't use it though, so that tells me there is something lacking.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe so, but my interpretation is that there's personal opposition to change and improvement from people like Linus or TGLX or other greybeards. At least in the linux kernel world. The contribution by email is an antiquated approach and needs to go. Now, knowing the HN crowd this comment will become grey in 3... 2... 1...
What is antiquated about sending patches via email? Have you ever used email to contribute to a project or review a patch?
Re: Email and Git = <3
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice! Yeah, CVS, I don't know much about it, but your comment reminds me I should check out things outside the git ken! They might just have valuable understandings I need to learn! Thanks for letting me know about it :)
If you decide to expand your horizons, take a look not only at the venerable CVS but also at things like perforce, fossil, and pijul.
Re: Email and Git = <3
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually know, when the interface is not too shiny, that the content might be good. It's the same with HN. And those interfaces are still very easy to understand and use. That being said, there is certainly room for improvement.
[flagged]
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.