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1. Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Jan-2018 11:32:19 EST Bob Mottram
   @liw gogs and gitea also have PRs, and arguably look even more similar to Github.
   
   I generally prefer PRs because email isn't a reliable communication system for me and some small percentage of the time my address gets blocked.
   1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2018 07:14:22 EST clacke

      in reply to
      @bob @liw Another advantage of PRs is that they are easy for a third party to observe and comment on, whereas a patch would reside in private mail or at best a mailing list.
      
      @perloid or Ken commented on one of the two latest monthly HPR Community News that putting things in issues (which is part of what a PR is, even if they are two different things in the GH interface) rather than a mailing list helps with keeping track on what's done and not.
      
      I 100% agree with the observation that GitHub is problematic and GitLab is somewhat problematic. I would say though that GitLab includes a whole lot of things in the fully-free version, and what was missing last time I checked (literally years ago though) was basically things like integration with an existing enterprise authn/authz system. Gitea/Gogs does not have this issue, but not by having that functionality in the free version, rather by there not existing a non-free add-on, so I don't know if that is really an improvement for this particular issue.
      
      As for distributed PRs and issue tracking, the only system I am aware of is git-ssb[0], which does it by living on top of an already distributed messaging system, secure-scuttlebutt[1].
      
      [0] https://git-ssb.celehner.com/%25n92DiQh7ietE%2BR%2BX%2FI403LQoyf2DtR3WQfCkDKlheQU%3D.sha256
      [1] https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/
      1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2018 07:16:04 EST clacke

         in reply to
         @liw @bob
         
         > especially the emails Github sends about PRs seemed useless beyond a basic "something happened" notification, which prompt me to check the web UI
         
         Sadly the typical flaw of a place like github that is more corporate social network than collaboration tool. Gotta get those page views and that engagement. No incentive to improve ways of living outside the web page.
         1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2018 07:18:40 EST clacke

            in reply to
            @liw @bob
            
            > merging a PR is perhaps too easy, and I worry that it leads me to merging without sufficient review (that is of course a personal flaw)
            
            Integration with build bots that can comment directly on the PR with automated test results probably helps a lot with reducing this potential issue. There are several available, free software and not, which are usually provided free of charge for free software.
            
            GitLab has bundled CI support as well, free of charge for free and non-free, public and private, users on their centralized instance.
      2. Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2018 07:23:10 EST Bob Mottram

         in reply to
         @clacke @perloid @liw In old skool development methodology - as for the Linux kernel - patches would always be sent to mailing lists and not just privately. But having had some limited involvement with the kernel in my opinion email list based change management is really cumbersome. Unless you're very on top of your email client customizations it can be easy to just be flooded by many random unrelated patch emails and lose track of the status of your particular patch. Something like a Github PR is much easier.
         1. arunisaac (arunisaac@social.systemreboot.net)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jan-2018 08:09:02 EST arunisaac

            in reply to
            FWIW, there is Debbugs (https://debbugs.gnu.org), a bug tracker that uses the mail-patch workflow. The debbugs web interface looks dated, but it has a decent emacs interface (https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/debbugs.html).