Re: GitHub “pull request” is useful and can be easily integrated'’

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> writes:

> On Sun, 19 Apr 2015 19:00:33 +1000
> Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
> > How can a collaborator Alice, with no GitHub account, get the pull
> > request?
>
> Public github repositories do not need a github account to clone.

This is quite frustrating. There's some serious equivocating by GitHub
apologists in this discussion:

* Raising the topic of competing repository hosting services, reliably
  leads to insistence that GitHub provides special, GitHub-only features
  that make it much more (implicitly, better) than a mere Git repo
  hosting service.

* Raising the topic of GitHub's features that aren't standard Git
  protocol, reliably leads to dismissal of all those proprietary GitHub
  features as being irrelevant since of course we can all clone a repo
  from the service.

We're told that GitHub has a raft of features that make it superior,
until it's pointed out that those features are GitHub-specific and
incompatible with collaborators from outside; then, conveniently, the
specialness of those features dwindles to insignificance because we can
access the repo's commits.


In this instance, I've been talking about a GitHub proprietary feature,
incompatible with Git: the GitHub pull request. In response, the non
sequitur of “anyone can clone a GitHub repo” is raised as though it were
relevant.

Yes, Alice can clone the repo. So what? That doesn't allow Alice as an
external party to collaborate in the GitHub pull request on Bob's repo.
The pull request remains siloed within GitHub, accesible only via a
GitHub account Alice doesn't have and doesn't want.

Likewise, as an external party Alice can collaborate via ‘git
send-email’ or ‘git request-pull’ on an equal footing with any other
repo (including GitHub repos). But Bob, having chosen GitHub's
proprietary pull requests as an essential part of his workflow, has
thereby chosen to silo his repo such that Alice can't collaborate as a
peer from outside GitHub.


> > How does a collaborator Alice, with no GitHub account, access Bob's
> > repository on GitHub and use the standard ‘git-request-pull’ to make
> > a pull request to Bob? How does this interact with the GitHub pull
> > request feature?
>
> TBH I've never used or been asked to even consider using
> git-request-pull for any of the free software work I've done on any
> project using git.

Thanks. Everything I've read trying to find a way to make that possible
points to the conclusion it can't be done: Alice can't send a Git pull
request from outside GitHub and have it fit the GitHub pull request
workflow. GitHub's pull request workflow only works for GitHub repos.

> Github pull requests absolutely can be received and handled using
> standard git commands and with a (default) public repo, anyone can
> access them, no accounts necessary.

As far as I can tell, the only sense that can be true is if you ignore
everything about GitHub pull request that actually makes it a GitHub
pull request (as opposed to just a bunch of commits in a repo).


I don't object to people using tools they find convenient. I object to
those tools having detrimental effects on collaboration, on the
distributed nature of the protocols we use to collaborate.

I object to being told that a service is open when it isn't. I object to
being told features are simultaneously unique to a service and not
unique to that service.

Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net> writes:

> Have you used github? If not you should: the best position to critique
> a system from is one of familiarity.

If I were to critique only the effects GitHub has for the individual who
uses it, that would be a valid point. As it is, I'm criticising the
effects GitHub has on a community *including people who don't use it*.

I object to implications that criticism of GitHub's effects, on
collaboration with peers who don't use GitHub, can be dismissed
precisely because that person doesn't use GitHub.

If a case were to be formed to argue GitHub is a monoculture pressuring
outsiders to conform, that's a good way to do it.

-- 
 \      “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking |
  `\                               they don't have any.” —Alice Walker |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney