About patches on the mailing list vs bitbucket pull requests

[Nick Coghlan]

On 25 February 2015 at 07:45, Thomas De Schampheleire
<patrickdepinguin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As you noticed I have been sending patches to the mailing list lately,
> rather than opening bitbucket pullrequests.
>
> I find the feedback/discussion more easy on such e-mailed patches.

I'm personally more used to the Python and Beaker workflows, where all
patches are handled separately either on the tracker (Python) or in
Gerrit (Beaker), rather than being mixed in with the higher level
design discussions on the mailing list.

Both of those also allow line-by-line commenting on patches, syntax
highlighting, side by side diff views, etc.

> However, the biggest downside is that it is difficult to see which
> patches are still to be applied/discussed.

And that's exactly why we do it - while being on the issue tracker or
in Gerrit doesn't necessarilly ensure a proposal will get looked at,
it at least means we know whether or not it has been applied, and
where it landed. It also enables cross-linking between commits and the
issues they address.

> A goal that was stated before is to send patches through Our Own
> Kallithea.

Big +1 for that here. Managing patches via email feels quite alien
given my workflow background - the lack of line-by-line commenting is
particularly noticeable.

The one downside is that it's not quite as easy for a casual observer
to track project activity, but CPython's solution for that is the
python-checkins mailing list, so folks can easily do post-review of
changes if they care to.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia