New guide section on Git and GitHub

[Jonathan Stickel]

On 4/11/18 17:31, macports-dev-request at lists.macports.org wrote:
> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:33:19 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" 
> <pmetzger at macports.org> To: Andrew Moore <slewsys at gmail.com> Cc: 
> MacPorts Development <macports-dev at lists.macports.org> Subject: Re: New 
> guide section on Git and GitHub Message-ID: 
> <20180411183319.2b847b17 at jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> Content-Type: 
> text/plain; charset=utf-8 On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:19:50 -0400 Andrew 
> Moore <slewsys at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My impression from the mailing list is that going forward Trac
>> would be used exclusively for bug reports.  Any code submissions
>> would ideally be submitted as pull requests to GitHub.
> That's both true and not quite true. I think ultimately we'll be
> going to that but for the moment we're easing in to it. The document
> currently says, in effect, "we strongly prefer GitHub pulls over Trac
> for code submissions."
> 
> I figure that ultimately it will indeed say "please
> only submit code by GitHub" but I don't think we have consensus on
> that yet. (If I'm wrong and we do have consensus, someone should feel
> free to make that even stronger in the document.)
> 
>> If so, this
>> change needs to put front and center, in large display type.
>>
>> Section 7 “MacPorts Projects” should begin:  SUBMIT CODE AS GITHUB
>> PULL. REQUESTS.  IF YOU JUST WANT TO $#!@, PLEASE USE TRAC -AM

As a long time contributor of patches using the ticket interface (Trac), 
I think it would be a mistake to discourage submission of patches there. 
While it is fine to encourage use of git pull requests, the barrier of 
entry is much higher. In fact, I just made my first pull request this 
week, and, after a nontrivial amount of effort, I still managed to mess 
it up. Git is quite powerful for sure, but it definitely has a learning 
curve. Pull requests makes use of multiple layers of abstract concepts 
(forks and branches) and multiple steps.

I think it would be reasonable to expect casual users to still upload 
patches to trac, which then port maintainers ought to turn into PRs. My 
2 cents.

Regards,
Jonathan