[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] 5 year plan & Inovation

[Ondřej Fiala]

On Mon Apr 29, 2024 at 8:03 AM CEST, Davy Durham wrote:
> On 4/19/24 09:50, Niklas Haas wrote:
> +1 from me too.  Please oh, please oh, /please/ modernize the patch 
> management.  I don't know what the opposition/inability to use github is 
> all about.  But gitlab should be a great improvement on the ML/patchwork 
> situation.
I can give you my POV as someone who dislikes GitHub-like workflows. I
have no idea if anyone's gonna read it, but anyway...

To contribute with GitHub/GitLab, I have to create an account. This
might sound trivial, but I find it really annoying to have to maintain
an account on a bunch of code hosting platform just to contribute a single
patch to a bunch of software projects. I guarantee you I wouldn't contribute
to ffmpeg if I had to create an account to do so (though my patch wasn't
incorporated anyway despite it being like 20 lines, so I guess it wouldn't
change much).

Another issue which is very important to me is the fact that neither GitHub
nor GitLab work reliably with various privacy add-ons and browser settings.
Gitea is the only GitHub-like software that is usable with these, so if you
really have to use a GitHub-like workflow, please consider that over GitLab
if you care at all about usability.GitLab is the worst in this respect
because not a single thing about it works without JavaScript (I mean,
I can't even read a project's README without it).

I would really suggest you look at SourceHut. It keeps mailing list with
patches workflow, but all the patches are tracked including whether they
were incorporated, rejected, someone requested changes, etc. Other than
that it has many features you find in other code hosting platforms,
including an issue tracker, CI/CD, an equivalent for GitHub's "wiki"
and "pages" features, etc. It's more accessible than all the platforms
I've mentioned above, in particular it seems to work well even in limited
browsers without JavaScript and the UI is faster (much faster than GitLab).

It also does not require you to have an account to contribute. In fact,
I don't have an account there either and want to make it clear that I am
not connected to SourceHut in any way. I just really enjoy the experience
of contributing like:

$ git format-patch master
$ git send-email ~username/project-devel at lists.sr.ht

No need to sign up to a mailing list or a code hosting platform, no need
to create a "fork" and a pull request, ...

>
> gitlab has a hosted edition for opensource projects 
> <https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/join/>.   (Or is the 
> opposition to github about trusting someone else to host it in general?)
>
> Automated CI/CD pipelines will change your /life/ if you've never used 
> them.  I was once opposed but wouldn't want to do it any other way for 
> any significant project anymore.
>
> Inline comments on MRs would be a great improvement for discussions and 
> requests from maintainers, and plus it's much easier to see/drill-into 
> those discussion from the blame view.
>
> my two cents
>
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