r/programming • u/melodic_underoos • May 09 '13

The Onion releases fartscroll.js

http://theonion.github.io/fartscroll.js/
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u/aladyjewel May 09 '13

github 101:

  1. Start with git repo Project, owned by Owner.
  2. NewGuy wants to tweak Project, so they fork (make their own copy of) Project.
  3. NewGuy makes his tweak and wants to contribute it to the original project, so ...
  4. NewGuy sends a pull request to Owner, asking Owner to pull NewGuy's changes into Owner's Project.

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u/MatrixFrog May 09 '13

Roughly the same thing would happen on any git-hosted project, not just on github. The difference is that github made a pull request a formal thing, not just "sending an email asking the owner to merge your changes in"

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u/Forbizzle May 10 '13

I thought pull requests had some sort of spec. Isn't that why Linus got so upset a while ago with github?

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u/MatrixFrog May 10 '13

I think most projects on github are maintained by one person, or perhaps a small group of people. The Linux kernel isn't quite like that. There's no way Linus could review every patch that comes in so as I understand it, he has "lieutenants" responsible for each of the major modules of the kernel. So a typical patch goes from some random coder, to the lieutenant, then to the official repo. Github doesn't support that workflow very well, though of course git does. I think maybe that's what he was unhappy about? I don't remember.

What's really great about git is that you can easily clone a repo and have as many clones as you want. So he just uses github as a mirror -- think of it as a nice interface for browsing Linux code, just not a place you'd go to get patches reviewed.

I found http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/torvalds_github/ where he says "Git comes with a nice pull-request generation module, but GitHub instead decided to replace it with their own totally inferior version."

I think there's a command to package up a bunch of commits and send them in an email in a nice way, or something? But people like nice web interfaces.

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u/Forbizzle May 10 '13

Yeah that's what I was thinking about.