Can we provide another UI for patches than just email ?

[Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr>]

Dear Guix,

I've just blown up Guix's debbugs by opening (and then closing) 33 bugs
instead of sending a 33-commits patch series.

I've also seen that there is a huge discussion on the cognitive overhead
of contributing. I will read it as soon as I can spare more time on this.

I find git email's workflow extremely frustrating and confusing. I know
it works for most of you who actually commit, but I would like to point
out that I'm one more person to be tripped by its complexity, and who
cares enough to say so here. There are probably even more people who
don't speak up.

Therefore, there is a huge cost in keeping up using it: less people will
be able to provide patches, and software will get stale.

For example, ou current Go version is 1.17 ! From 2021 ! The current is
1.21. I suspect that if contributing was easier, we wouldn't have a 2
years delay in our versions.

I do not want to open a flamewar about the merits of git email. I want
to point out that I personnaly find it difficult and that I'm not the
only one.

Now, do we want to address this as a community, and welcome developers
who may have good patches to contribute, but who can't spare at least ten
hours to get confortable with git email ?

An alternative solution would be to provide a public or semi-public git
remote, and just let people git push their branches there.

I suspect a git hook can then provide integration with debbugs if
necessary, and I would be willing to assist writing it.

In the current state, the UX is just unbearable, and I have in the past
(and likely will again) just not bothered sending patches because the
experience is so time consuming and infuriating.

Before anybody tries to explain to me that git send-email is easier than
I think, what you have to beat is:
git remote add guix-patches WHATEVER #only once
git push -u guix-patches master:some-unique-name

You can then push, pull, rebase, whatever, from the command line (or
magit in my case), without leaving your dev context. Can't be easier
than that.

Sorry about blowing up the debbugs. I'll do my best to avoid it in the
future.

Cheers,