Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[MSavoritias <email@msavoritias.me>]

Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Am Sonntag, dem 27.08.2023 um 16:57 +0300 schrieb Saku Laesvuori:
>> > > 
>> > not sure how most people consume their emails nowadays, but for me
>> > it's one flat list per thread, in a browser (i.e. it's not a tree).
>> 
>> The point is that the emails contain the information on how to
>> construct a tree out of them. It's just that most web clients (which
>> most people are unfortunately using nowadays) are so bad that they
>> render the tree as a flat list.
> Not sure about "most", but Guix folk are definitely biased towards
> dedicated mail clients (terminal, graphical, Emacs…), so perhaps my own
> perception was a little off in that people will always benefit from
> having the tree.  Then again, you can share your email between multiple
> clients, which isn't that easy to do with code repositories sadly.  
>
> Of course, you can mirror the repo, but your bug trackers aren't that
> easily mirrored.
>
>> 
>> > and all i'm trying to achieve here is to move the discussion away
>> > from email-is-superior-period, to look at what requiremenets we
>> > have and what tools satisfy them, if any.
>> 
>> I think that is a good discussion to have, but I think it would be
>> better to describe some of the requirements you think we should
>> consider instead of just saying email isn't superior. It might not
>> be, but it might also be. We should consider what we need and
>> evaluate the available tools based on that, and if the result is that
>> email is the best then it is.
> Not needing to register yet another account for one-off contributions
> is an argument that kills all the forges, sadly :)
>
With Sourcehut you can contribute without an account.
There is also https://forgefed.org/ which is for federated forges using
activitypub. So you can have one account for all forges that
federate. :D

MSavoritias
>> > > at the ChatGPT-related stuff that has been submitted). There
>> > > sadly is no pleasing everyone here and unless these tools are
>> > > incredibly simple to maintain, the utilitarian approach of least
>> > > misery leads you to plain email.
>> > 
>> > but is a least-misery model appropriate here? how do you even
>> > account for the contributions that could have happened in a
>> > different environment, but did not happen?
>> > 
>> > similarly, e.g. demanding a dated ChangeLog format for commit
>> > messages has a filtering effect on who will contribute, and then
>> > who will stick around. most engineers have a hard time jumping
>> > through hoops that they find pointless (git automatically encodes
>> > that information), and i'd suggest considering what the effect are
>> > of such rules on Guix asan emergent order.
>> 
>> I agree on the ChangeLogs being a weird thing to require in commit
>> messages. I think of commit messages as the place where you record
>> the reasons behind the change in the commit. The ChangeLog seems to
>> just record the changes which the diff of the commit already
>> automatically records more accurately.
> First things first, I disagree with the framing here.  Engineers do
> pointless things all the time and both code style and commit message
> style have near endless potential for bikeshedding (which we are
> currently engaged in btw).  There are like thirteen competing standards
> on how to format C code and similar debates in other languages.  In
> fact, I'd go so far as to argue that a language ecosystem that has no
> such debate is potentially lacking in diversity.
>
> A proper ChangeLog doesn't simply "record the changes the diff already
> records more accurately".  It adds semantics.  For instance, when
> bumping a package, we write the same line twice; once for the header,
> once for the ChangeLog.  What we don't write is that we also adjusted
> the hash along with the version.  Doing so would give us no new
> information, but the diff includes it anyway, because diffs are stupid.
> Humans writing (and reading) ChangeLogs aren't stupid and can rely on
> contextual meta-information – however, the ChangeLog should still be
> self-contained in the sense that it doesn't rely on other parts of the
> message to infer the actual changes made.
>
>> If someone has use cases for the ChangeLog commits, I'd like to hear
>> them. Maybe there is something that can't be achieved with git
>> history without ChangeLogs, but I can't think of anything. Someone
>> mentioned grepping the git log with them, but I think the same thing
>> can be done with git log and git blame regardless of the commit
>> message format.
> In my humble opinion, you underestimate the benefits of not having to
> invoke another command on a commit.  For a great number of changes, the
> ChangeLog style allows me to imagine the code that was written without
> having to see it in a way that a simple diffstat just can't.  Of
> course, whether you use ChangeLog style commit messages, Emoji commits
> or any other formatting guide is a political question between everyone
> involved in a project, but there are benefits to having guidelines and
> following them.  
>
> It's similar to following generally accepted etiquette in any circle. 
> People will generally be happy as long as you follow them and can often
> tolerate small deviations, but at a certain point it just becomes
> uncomfortable, so we kindly ask you to follow the established
> practices.
>
> Cheers