Re: [PATCHv4] Documentation: triangular workflow

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 10, 2016, 16:47 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqinxhf0sx.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <E41AB752AE614E189BC5BE289A8AEB2A@PhilipOakley>

"Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> +Preparation
>> +~~~~~~~~~~~
>> +
>> +Cloning from **PUBLISH**, which is a fork of **UPSTREAM** or an empty
>> +repository.
>
> I agree here. To clone the upstream, to which you have no push access (by 
> definition), would leave the config badly mis-set for the basic user. It's 
> better for the user to clone their publish fork (to which they have both 
> read and write access).

I do not think I agree.

If you apriori know that you do want to hack on a project's code, then forking at GitHub first and then cloning the copy would be OK.

But I doubt that would be a common set-up, unless you are focusing only on school-like setting where you are told by your instructor to "make changes to this public project, and show the result in your fork". In real life you cannot tell if the project is worth your time modifying until you see it first, can you?

I suspect that the majority of local clones start from something like "I want to build and use from the tip", "I want to use a module that does X, and there are three candidates, so let's clone them all to evaluate", etc. You do not bother "forking at GitHub" but just clone from the upstream for these clones.

After you build it and try things out, you may start making local changes, and you may even record your changes as local commits. You play with your local clone of the upstream. After doing so, you may find that some of the projects do not fit your needs, but for some others, you would find that it is worth your time and effort to upstream your changes and/or keep working further on the project.

And at that point, you would create a publishing place, push into it, and tell others "Hey I did this interesting thing!". That "creat a publishing place" step could be just a one click at GitHub.

Isn't that how you work with other people's projects? Or do you always modify every project you fetch from the outside world?, Do you always fork first, just in case you *might* change and you *might* have to have a place to push your changes out?

If you tell novices "You fork first and then clone your fork", and in the ideal (to you) case they will follow that advice to the letter and they will end up with forks of all projects they will ever look at, in many of which they make no local commit.

What is more likely to happen is that they will first ignore you and start from a local clone of the upstream, and then find this document that says "triangular workflow requires you to fork first, clone that fork and work in it". Because they would have to fork first and make another clone, this time a clone of the fork, in order to follow the instruction of this document, they oblige, ending up with two clones. More importantly, this makes the local clone of the upstream they made earlier and the changes they made in that clone appear useless. They need to be told how to transplant the work done in the clone to the newly created clone of the fork, in order to publish them.

If your instruction begins with "You clone from upstream as usual (i.e. just like when you make a "read-only" clone without any intention to make changes or push changes out), and add a publish place if/when it becomes necessary", the problem described in the previous paragraph goes away, no?