contribution process

Wed Jul 2 19:26:57 UTC 2014

On Jul 2, 2014, at 3:15 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc at bbs.darktech.org> wrote:

> Augie,
> 
> I brought up this topic because someone brought it up off-list in response to my post. I have never attempted to contribute to hg (mostly because my lack of Python experience) but I can definitely see how (quoting Paul) "emailing patches is a crummy process".

How? Please elaborate. I've been doing review-by-email for 6 or 7 _years_ as the sole way I've been involved with tools like Mercurial. I'd like specifics on how this is bad for potential contributors so I can have meaningful conversations on how to improve our contribution process for everyone.

I'd really like to chase down /what/ about patches-by-email is perceived to be awful. Right now I'm only hearing that y'all hate it, but not WHY.

> I understand your reluctant to rely on non-OSS services, but I think people would benefit greatly from a better-organized, more visual contribution process as Github-style pull requests provide. I'm not asking you to stop accepting patches through the mailing list, but rather suggesting that accepting pull requests off Bitbucket would be a major step in the right direction.

I've already stated how frustrating PRs are, both on BB and GH. That being a contribution mechanism for hg wouldn't be likely to get love from me or mpm, and I suspect the other reviewers would also not be fans of doing reviews there.

[elided some "just try it", which I see as a nonstarter because it fragments the patch stream and the PR interface is lousy for reviewers in my experience]

> I think you could pretty easily generate mailing list traffic from pull requests, but not the other way around (as you seem to be asking).

That's an interesting-ish option. Would we also be able to get the reviews posted back to the ML so that the list remains the sole source of truth about what's going on?

> Gili
> 
> On 02/07/2014 2:10 PM, Paul Nathan wrote:
>> Development by emailing patches is a crummy process. That has been remarked upon more than a few times in the mailing list. I won't reiterate reasons previously mentioned. If contributions are down, use bitbucket as the central staging repo and use their pull requests.  There's also a foss clone of bb that I can't recall the name of atm.
>> 
>> I don't see hg as lacking features, personally.  It beats git in nearly every way imo.
>> 
>> ---
>> Regards,
>> Paul Nathan
>> 
>> On July 2, 2014 10:28:24 AM PDT, Augie Fackler <raf at durin42.com> wrote:
>>> On Jul 2, 2014, at 11:34 AM, cowwoc <cowwoc at bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Augie,
>>>> 
>>>> Perhaps it would help if we could streamline the contribution
>>> process…?
>>> 
>>> http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ContributingChanges is the current
>>> process, for reference. If you've got advice on how we could make that
>>> more inviting, let's talk it out?
>>> 
>>>> Right now the main hg repository is http://selenic.com/repo/hg. As
>>> far as I can tell, there is no "pull request" process so contributing
>>> could certainly be made easier. I don't think this is *the* answer for
>>> fixing Mercurial's popularity but faster growth would certainly help us
>>> catch up on any missing features (which, in my opinion, is half the
>>> problem).
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure how pull requests would help here? It'd add a place I have
>>> to check for patches. Also, I'm completely unaware of
>>> free-as-in-freedom tools that support pull requests - if you're aware
>>> of something, please let me know. I'd at least spend a little while
>>> investigating.
>>> 
>>> If someone was interested in writing some sort of web service that
>>> could turn our mailing list traffic into a somewhat pull-request-like
>>> UI, that'd be something of great interest to me - that'd be the best of
>>> both worlds.
>>> 
>>>> Gili
>>>> 
>>>> On 01/07/2014 1:36 PM, Augie Fackler wrote:
>>>>> On Jun 30, 2014, at 1:35 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc at bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'd like to bring your attention to:
>>>>>> 
>>> http://www.google.ca/trends/explore?hl=en-US&q=mercurial,+git,+github,+bitbucket&cmpt=q&content=1
>>>>>> It seems to me that GitHub is directly responsible for Git's
>>> popularity
>>>>>> skyrocketing in 2009. By comparison, Mercurial's popularity seems
>>> to be
>>>>>> stagnant for a while. Bitbucket initially did a decent job, but
>>> ever since
>>>>>> they got bought out by Atlassian all public announcements emphasize
>>> Git
>>>>>> support and don't mention Mercurial at all.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Case in point:
>>>>>> 
>>> http://blog.bitbucket.org/2012/12/10/feature-branches-just-got-better/
>>>>>> How do we go about reversing this trend?
>>>>> I think one thing that would help would be users blogging more about
>>> their workflows and how hg makes them productive. I keep meaning to do
>>> this, but I have too many things pulling at my attention to ever manage
>>> to get started.
>>>>>> Gili
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> View this message in context:
>>> http://mercurial.808500.n3.nabble.com/Mercurial-popularity-is-stagnant-tp4011549.html
>>>>>> Sent from the General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Mercurial mailing list
>>>>>> Mercurial at selenic.com
>>>>>> http://selenic.com/mailman/listinfo/mercurial
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Mercurial mailing list
>>> Mercurial at selenic.com
>>> http://selenic.com/mailman/listinfo/mercurial
> 

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