Re:Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018)
by cytzol on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @07:20AM
(#23700232)
There's one thing that keeps stopping me from adopting the mailing list approach, in favour of GitHub Pull Requests, and that's this:
If, ten seconds after I've clicked Submit, I discover an embarrassing error in the code, or that I've accidentally committed some personal information, or I've sent the e-mail from the wrong address, or anything else I haven't thought of yet, there's nothing I can do and it's public forever.
Some would see this as an anti-feature, but I really do like using GitHub because I have the ability to go back and edit or delete my Pull Request if I spot an embarrassing mistake. I know the solution to this is "be more careful", but I still feel anxious sending e-mails to a mailing list, and calm using GitHub.
Re:Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018)
by u801e on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @03:56PM
(#23705801)
There are bots out there that scrape sensitive information from Github repositories. If you inadvertently push up a commit with a secret in it, then consider it compromised. Email is no different in that regard.
Re:Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018)
by IshKebab on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @04:48AM
(#23699325)
I think most of these advantages are overblown. Glad I read this though because I didn't know about the 'patience' diff algorithm and I've been looking for something like that for years!
> Finally, creating patches by hand with diff can take advantage of other options, like annotating the hunk headers with which C functions are affected (using the -p flag), and the choice of various algorithms such as “patience.”
Re:Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018)
by u801e on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @07:08AM
(#23700162)
> I think most of these advantages are overblown.
One thing that wasn't mentioned as an advantage of a mailing list is the index a mail client provides for discussion. This allows one to easily see which messages have been read, who has responded to whom and the ability to jump to a particular message in the discussion.
Github, on the other hand, mixes the overall diff with comments, so if there are a lot of comments, and the diff is large, then it requires a lot of scrolling to find a given comment. It also takes some time to find a given comment and see if it someone has responded to it.
Re:Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018)
by techntoke on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @03:46AM
(#23698922)
Always wanted to try using email for Git since it is built in and decentralized. A lot of core Linux projects do this, but I wish there was a better guide on getting started.
If, ten seconds after I've clicked Submit, I discover an embarrassing error in the code, or that I've accidentally committed some personal information, or I've sent the e-mail from the wrong address, or anything else I haven't thought of yet, there's nothing I can do and it's public forever.
Some would see this as an anti-feature, but I really do like using GitHub because I have the ability to go back and edit or delete my Pull Request if I spot an embarrassing mistake. I know the solution to this is "be more careful", but I still feel anxious sending e-mails to a mailing list, and calm using GitHub.
Does anyone relate?
> Finally, creating patches by hand with diff can take advantage of other options, like annotating the hunk headers with which C functions are affected (using the -p flag), and the choice of various algorithms such as “patience.”
One thing that wasn't mentioned as an advantage of a mailing list is the index a mail client provides for discussion. This allows one to easily see which messages have been read, who has responded to whom and the ability to jump to a particular message in the discussion.
Github, on the other hand, mixes the overall diff with comments, so if there are a lot of comments, and the diff is large, then it requires a lot of scrolling to find a given comment. It also takes some time to find a given comment and see if it someone has responded to it.
https://git-send-email.io/