Re: Extract Git classes from git-svn (1/10)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 18, 2012, 05:49 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy5mhwrdl.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120717233125.GF25325@burratino>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

> The mailing list archive at
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git might be
> useful for seeing some examples of how it plays out in practice.

By allowing people to easily publish a completed work, and making it easier for them to let others peek at their work, Git hosting services like GitHub are wonderful. But I am not conviced that quality code reviews like we do on the mailing list can be done with existing Web based interface to a satisfactory degree.

Patches with proposed commit log messages are sent via e-mail, people can review them and comment on them with quotes from the relevant part of the patch. The review can even be made offline, yet at the end, the list archive is an easy one-stop location you need to go to see how the changes progressed, what the background thinking was, etc. for all the changes that matter.

Look at recent ones (randomly, $gmane/199492, $gmane/199497, $gmane/200750, $gmane/201477, $gmane/201434), and their re-rolls, and admire how well the process works.

I've played with GitHub's in-line code comment interface, but honestly, it is cumbersome to use, for one thing, but more importantly, you have to click around various repositories of pull requestors, dig around to see in-line comments, and I do not see how we can keep a coherent "discussion" like we do on the mailing list.

There may be a hosting site with better code review features, but all the code review of Git happens on this mailing list, and that is not likely to change in the near future.

[Footnote]

$gmane stands for http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/ in the above description.