Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[(]

Katherine Cox-Buday <cox.katherine.e@gmail.com> writes:
>> - Sending the emails: This isn't that bad once you get used to it;
>>    sadly most Git clients (magit sadly included) don't support send-email
>>    well or at all.  But on the command line, all you need to do is:
>>    # for a single commit
>>    $ git send-email --to=guix-patches@gnu.org -1 --base=master -a
>>    # for several commits
>>    $ git send-email --to=guix-patches@gnu.org -$N_COMMITS --base=master 
>> --cover-letter -a
>>    Or, if sending an amended series:
>>    $ git send-email --to=$BUG_NUM@debbugs.gnu.org -$N_COMMITS --base=master 
>> -a -v$VERSION
>
> It's this. Having to:
>
> 1. Remember the flags and their values
> 2. Remember the email address (it might seem silly unless you have forms of
> dyslexia. is it guix-patches? or patches-guix? Wait, what was I doing?)
> 3. And then the whole deal with what to do with follow ups.
>
> I feel like I know my way around git pretty well, but I struggle with how 
> those
> concepts map onto sending emails.
>
> I have only been able to surmount this by lifting these concepts through 
> scripts
> into higher-order concepts with less cognitive overhead.

Ah, okay.  This might be solvable with the `mumi` command...

>> - Switching between branches: The best way to handle this is with
>>    subtrees; see `git subtree --help`.
>
> Interesting! I use worktrees, but maybe subtrees are easier? I'll have to read
> up on this. Thank you!

Oops, sorry, I did mean worktrees :)  I ran 'git subtree --help'
forgetting that it's actually 'git worktree', but it turns out subtrees
are a thing too; so I saw that the command worked and assumed I'd got
the correct name for the command... 

>
>> - Applying patches: This is a bit annoying.  Most email clients won't
>>    let you set up commands to pipe mailboxes to, unlike aerc.  Perhaps we
>>    could have a `mumi apply` command to fetch a patch series from debbugs
>>    and apply it to the checkout.
>
> I wrote some elisp to one-key apply patches from GNUS, but I guess my point 
> is:
> not everyone can do that. How are we to expect more contributors if that, or
> something similar, is the barrier to entry?

That's very true.

I think possibly the best way to deal with this would be to invest
effort in improving `mumi`, with a `mumi apply` and better
`mumi send-email` functionality.

  -- (