Re: On pull request workflows for the GNU toolchain

[Eric Gallager via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2024 at 8:09 AM Thomas Koenig via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> [For the fortran people: Discussion on gcc@]
>
> Just a general remark.
>
> There are people, such as myself, who regularly mess up
> their git repositories because they have no mental model
> of what git is doing (case in point: The Fortran unsigned
> branch, which I managed to put into an unrepairable state
> despite considerable help from people who tried to help me
> fix it).

As one such person who has messed up his fork of GCC, I'd just like to
note that in my particular case at least, I messed it up because I was
trying to apply GitHub's model for git usage, while the GCC project
has a very different model for git usage, and the two don't exactly
play very well with one another. I see switching to a pull request
model as reducing the chances of people getting their forks into
unusable states, rather than increasing it.

> This is especially true of volunteer maintainers,
> who are still the mainstay of gfortran.
>
> Whatever you end up doing, consider such maintainers, and
> if they still can contribute or would simply give up.
> If what you end up doing is too complicated, it may end up
> severely impacting the gfortran project (and possibly others).
>
> Best regards
>
>         Thomas
>
>
>