Re: Proposal to deploy GitLab on gnome.org

[Mattias Bengtsson <mattias jc bengtsson gmail com>]

On Wed, 2017-05-17 at 16:47 +0200, Jehan Pagès wrote:
> Hi,
> […]
> The typical workflow as advised by github (and therefore I believe
> that's similar in gitlab), if not mistaken, is:

Unless you have push privileges, in which case you'd just create a wip-
or feature branch and make a merge request. This is what's recommended
on the GitLabWorkflows[1] page.

> […] So I just clone the upstream, and only if I end up doing a patch,
> I would only then "fork" on github, then update my local repository
> to point to my "fork", so that I can push then click the "pull
> request" button. That's still very cumbersome.

For most of us active in this discussion, this won't be an issue since
we'll have push privileges (see above). 

However. What you describe above is how I make drive-by patches on
GitHub, and I agree it can be a bit cumbersome. Fortunately there are
tools to help you. I use git-spindle[2] which has support for GitHub,
GitLab and Bitbucket. The, above manual steps becomes something like
this with git-spindle (using graphene as an example repo):

$ git hub clone ebassi/graphene && cd graphene
$ git checkout -b wip/my-cool-fix
 [ do some work ]
$ git commit -a -m "My awesome fix"
$ git hub fork
$ git hub pull-request
  [ Write merge message ]

> IMO this is a completely broken and over-complicated workflow. For
> long term contributors, having their own remote can be
> understandable.
> But for one-time contribs?

With proper tooling, the workflow isn't very complicated at all. And
it's definitely not "completely broken" as you suggest.

Regards,
Mattias

1: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure/GitLabW
orkflows
2: https://github.com/seveas/git-spindle