[Mesa-dev] [MR] Update README to recommend MRs instead of `git send-email`

[Jason Ekstrand]

On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 11:19 AM Kristian Høgsberg <hoegsberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 12:17 AM Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Sat, 6 Jul 2019 at 18:39, Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > > I see this as driving away contributions, esp from new people. MR's
> > > are annoying to create, since they require dealing with the hosting
> > > provider, getting it to host clones, etc. Everyone has email.
> >
> > My position - and the evidence of velocity from projects who have
> > switched - is already pretty clear, but you might be interested to
> > read that even kernel.org admins are trying to move away from email:
> >
> https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/patches-carved-into-developer-sigchains
>
> I have the same experience - I've used git since before it was usable
> and I'm more than happy to not have to worry about making git
> send-email work. I'm pretty sure that gitlab in general lowers the bar
> for contributions considerably, I know I find my self doing a lot more
> reviews and drive-by comments because of how easy it feels


I know I'm a gitlab fan-boy so you all know I like this.  What I will say
is that it's not only easier for new developers because PRs are a concept
they already know from GitHub and the like but it's also easier for
maintainers.  I've actually started getting annoyed when people send
patches to the list and I have to apply them from e-mail.  It's so much
easier to just check that they've added all the tags and click a couple
buttons in the web UI than to have to find the thing on patchwork, download
it, hope it applies, and push it.

I also don't get why this is controversial.  It's just a recommendation to
new people coming in off the internet who want to contribute.  If they've
got git-send-email set up and want to use that, we explicitly tell them
that they can.  But for those who don't, we suggest they make a PR which is
most likely something they already know how to do.  If you're already a
contributor, just keep doing what you're doing.

The only reason I could imagine to not make this change would be because
someone is hoping that new people will come in and join the git-send-email
camp and slow down the advance of GitLab.  The reality is that the majority
of mesa development is happening on GitLab these days anyway so people seem
to like it.

--Jason
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