Re: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?

[phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hello, Ted.
>
> On Wed, Jul 06, 2016 at 10:20:07AM -0400, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>> On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 13:52:04 -0800 John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> wrote: 
>
> [ .... ]
>
>> But Emacs doesn't have a pull request contribution system, which makes
>> it hard to review things before they go in, so contributors must know
>> and follow the right format at all times. It's a pain.
>
>> So I would suggest moving to a pull request system, where code review
>> from a second contributor is required to merge any non-trivial code
>> (exceptions should be granted based on years contributing to Emacs).
>> That also gives *everyone* the opportunity to comment on the code before
>> it's merged, instead of post-facto. Clearly services such as Github and
>> BitBucket and many others have been offering this functionality for a
>> while with good results.
>
>> A big advantage of pull requests is that they can group commits, so each
>> commit doesn't need the level of detail it does today, and so the
>> evolution of the work is visible to a reviewer.
>
> I don't know exactly what is meant by "pull request" and "pull request
> system".  I don't think they are established terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_version_control#Pull_requests

You send an email saying "here are the changes that I want to
incorporate".


> The term seems to imply that instead of a contributor pushing a change
> from his machine to a central repository, some specially authorised
> authority would pull the change from the contributor's machine.  This
> would seem to imply every contributor needing to set up an scp daemon on
> his local machine, which doesn't feel like a Good Thing.

On *some* machine, yes. That can be their own server, or a hosted git
repository, or a branch on the Emacs git repository.


> Please explain "pull request\( system\)?" more precisely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_code_review

It keeps a list of all the pull requests coming in. They provide things
like inline comments over diffs, threaded conversation, integration with
continuous integration. Many of them, once the PR is complete, will
automate the merge to master.

Phil