Re: RFC: Github PR bot questions

[Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@kernel.org>]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2021, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 17/06/21 17:16, Mark Brown wrote:
> > > Won't this just end up reimplementing a lot of stuff that we already get
> > > "for
> > > free" from Github and other forges? Yes, I know Github is proprietary, but
> > > so
> > > are many SMTP gateways used to send the patch series. I don't see how what
> > > the GH bot would do is different from:
> > I think part of the concern here is that people have some standard
> > expectations for how projects they work with on Github are going to
> > function so if people end up using Github to submit patches we may end
> > up with some culture and process mismatches which could cause issues.
> 
> This is true, and it's why I liked the suggestion of a bot that auto-closes
> the pull request but still 1) removes the need for the submitter to set up
> "git send-email" and 2) only does the send after basic checks for
> Signed-off-by and the like (checkpatch is already a bit borderline).

+1 for this idea

This would be very useful. Obviously I have no issues with emails and
everyone in this thread has no issues with emails otherwise we wouldn't
be here. (Personally I despise the github workflow.)


But newcomers often complain that it is too difficult to configure their
company email to work with git send-email and the LKML. Things such as:

- the company only offers Outlook as a client
- the company automatically adds the annoying disclaimer at the end of
  every email ("IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any
  attachments are confidential and may also be privileged...")

My comeback was: you don't have to use the company email. Setup your own
email. Their answer was that they are not allowed to do company work on
their private emails.


The GH bot would allow them to skip the git send-email setup. However,
in all fairness, they would still be stuck to Outlook with the
disclaimer to reply to code reviews unless they do something.