GitHub's ³pull request² is proprietary lock-in

[Random832]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
> They are. Ultimately, a GitHub pull request is backed by a git pull
> request.

There is no such thing as a "git pull request", except in the
ordinary english meaning of the word request. It is true that a
pull request is, from one angle, a formalized request for someone
to execute a git pull command.  But there is no command to create
a "pull request", nowhere for such a thing to exist in the
repository, etc.

It is, in essence, a parallel bug tracker, with its own discussion
system, its own statuses, etc.

> Here's an example:
>
> https://github.com/MikeiLL/appension/pull/187
>
> That's a request to pull https://github.com/Rosuav/appension's
> log_to_file branch
> (https://github.com/Rosuav/appension/tree/log_to_file) into the master
> branch. That can be fetched and merged into a local repository:
>
> git pull https://github.com/Rosuav/appension log_to_file
>
> If the official workflow is built on these commands, then it doesn't
> depend on GitHub at all. Someone puts through a GH PR and it'll create
> an email that provides all the necessary info; but equally, someone
> can use any other git hosting and send through an identical pull
> request without ever touching GH.

When I tried github it was also very unclear how someone can pull
to a github repository from a source other than another github
repository with an associated github pull request. I suppose they
could pull into their local repository and then push to github.

Also if someone puts through a github pull request and then their
patch is accepted, my understanding is that the pull request has
to be "closed" through a github online interface and merely
merging the patch through the git command line will not update the
status on the pull request.

> Since actual bug discussion isn't
> being moved away from bugs.python.org, this should be safe.

I don't think you can really narrow "actual bug discussion" like
that.  Some discussion takes place on the bug tracker, some
discussion takes place here, some discussion takes place on
python-ideas, some discussion takes place on other mailing
lists... and it's suspected that some discussion will take place
on github.  All of that discussion has value, and it's not good to
have any of it locked up in a place that cannot be exported.