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Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

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Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#241

Post by irahul »

antirez wrote: post #233
kylemaxwell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that vein, when somebody tells Linus: "You might have fun raging on the internet, but I think your goals would be better served if..." He rightly responds: "Umm. I think I've been able to reach my goals on the internet better than most people." I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. But then, I don't have his responsibility or experiences, either - and…

The problem is that many times you can't have one thing without another. What I mean is that what Linus accomplished is also fruit of his character, you need character and be opinionated to do "git" for instance. Or even to make the Linux kernel the success and good piece of software it is, with many contributions: what separates a big software project to become a mess is character. And the side effect is that he get…

> He is out there on github writing flames, arguing with people that have a github account completely clean and never wrote possibly a line of code at all. Exposing himself in the process to insults and so forth.

I never understood why do people who have completely clean github accounts feel the need to preach to someone who has been programming for a long, long time and is the major force behind two of very significant, technically hard piece of software. This won't be the first time this has happened. In the "Linux on C++" thread, someone comes in and says "I am surprised you wrote git in C. Don't tell me C++ is bad. That's bullshit. Clearly I know more about this than you do". Or even the Eric Raymonds' post about "Curse of the gifted" - he comes out of nowhere and starts calling Linux names. The fact that other developers didn't even bother responding to his bullshit made me happy.

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#243

Post by ash »

trafficlight wrote: post #203
ash wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think his goal is to have no arguments. His goal seems to be "fix this issue, god damn it!" And amusing rant can help bring attention to the issue (note tomayko comment in the original thread). I don't know about you, but the rant is entertaining to me.

My take from that message is he doesn't care if they fix it or not, but rather he won't be doing pull requests in it's current state.

Linus certainly cares. Otherwise he wouldn't tell github about it:

> I've told github people about my concerns, they didn't think they mattered, so I gave up. Feel free to make a bugreport to github.

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#244

Post by pdw »

eta_carinae wrote: post #211
kylemaxwell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that vein, when somebody tells Linus: "You might have fun raging on the internet, but I think your goals would be better served if..." He rightly responds: "Umm. I think I've been able to reach my goals on the internet better than most people." I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. But then, I don't have his responsibility or experiences, either - and…

> I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. And a few messages down, he proceeds to say "You are a moron". Not exactly a role model of civility.

But that was in response to some "Joseph", presumably one of "dozens of troll comments" that got deleted shortly after.

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#245

Post by adobriyan »

nwmcsween wrote: post #205
chj wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name one project out performing Linux kernel in terms of your definition of code quality. I'd like to have a surprise.

Define code quality: braindead GNU extensions such as nested functions - Linux uses that, How about the separation of DM and MD due to ego's, how every driver without a lib (such as libata) warranting a few exceptions has to rewrite boilerplate for basic things - frame buffer drivers are a good example. How about the syscall bugs - look into glibc if you feel like gouging your eyes out or jemalloc for more tame code.…

C nested functions were explicitly banned from Linux.

What are the others?

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#246

Post by glogla »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #86
yonester wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. The past few links on HN to comments by Tovald have been full of inflammatory, juvenile language. I'm sure the guy is intelligent and certainly deserves a place in CS hall-of-fame, but I think the way he carries himself in these forums has tarnished his reputation.

I feel like Tovald should watch DHH's railsconf talk on progress & the 'old' mentality. This feels alarmist, but he like any other githubber gets to choose what gets accepted or rejected.

Is there a link? I'd really grateful for that.

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#247

Post by glogla »

nupark2 wrote: post #89
1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Tovald should watch DHH's railsconf talk on progress & the 'old' mentality. This feels alarmist, but he like any other githubber gets to choose what gets accepted or rejected.

The fact that you're setting up DHH as a foil to Linus is exactly why the old men are cranky; when it comes to technology, Linus has more qualifications in his pinky than DHH has all put together.

Then again, are we talking about technical expertise, or about Linus' inability to act like a reasonable human being?

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#248

Post by gte910h »

astine wrote: post #42
gte910h wrote: post #22

Maintainer of a project doesn't like a tool some people like to use. News at 11. Seriously. Just dont' send this particular maintainer pull requests that way.

This maintainer is a little more notable than most... And his opinion is a little more relevant :)

That's the thing about science or really any discipline where results is more important than anything else.

It's not really. If any other maintainer of a project finds they're cool with pull requests from github, then it's a fine tool for those projects. This guy runs a project which is an outlier in it's size, and which is also a far older project than most of what github hosts.

Now if his criticism has useful facts, that MIGHT be useful, and it does: The github format has fewer bits of info. Could some of those bits of info be important? Maybe. I didn't sense a genuine, measured analysis, but instead a rant from a maintainer about something that's not working for his project. Nor did I see a counterpoint from github why their tool does it the way it does. There may be real design decisions there, ones that might be better answers than what Torvalds has, especially for projects far smaller than Torvalds.

Don't let Torvald's status as the maintainer of the Linux kernel (and creator of git, to do that task) make you forget he's also paid attention to because he's famous as well as a useful contributor. Fame doesn't make you more right, just more adored. His ideas still require critical analysis from the rest of us.

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#249

Post by natep »

DCoder wrote: post #228
benatkin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently "Joseph" deleted his comment (very un-git-like of GitHub to make deleting a comment without a trace so easy). I checked all the other participants above where "Joseph" posted and found a Dan, but no Joseph.

Reddit[1] found the "Joseph" in question, his comments are still visible in his public activity stream: https://github.com/pirtlj [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/tionj/linus_tor...

Thanks, good find!

So, if @pirtlj said that in response to Linus's first comment, then he was way out of line, and something should have been said. Maybe Linus didn't say the exact right thing, but I doubt I would have been able to say much better. Hopefully @pirtlj learned more than that he shouldn't have said anything (although even that would be a good thing, I think)

Re: Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

#250

Post by nirvdrum »

gchpaco wrote: post #236
nirvdrum wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, pardon the ignorance, but how does past tense imply something that would be affected by rebase? It may not be linear history, but it definitely happened in the past. I guess I always looked at more as: "here's a patch", "what did you do?" If it's just a tomato/tomato thing (yeah, that doesn't come out well in text), just let me know.

Because rebase, and rebase -i especially, gives you the ability to break your patches into discrete this-one-one-goddamn-thing patches (which is awkward in a "oh, you committed it? Then you committed it forever" SCM like Perforce or SVN), you should do so. It makes it a lot easier to review than the "so this does X, but also fixes some syntax errors and adds logging" style. And that means you should make the patch co…

Thanks for responding. I don't think I necessarily agree, but then again I rarely rebase because I distinctly dislike rewriting history, but I think I understand the rationale a bit better.
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