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Re: [jdt-dev] Telling GitHub to rebuild, rebase, ... 
Ed,
Entering "github edit file" into a famous web search engine has the first hit at: 

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/working-with-files/managing-files/editing-files
it gives an exhaustive documentation (as with most github stuff) explaining all the details for anyone who really wants to know these.
So I can only assume that this "meta-question" was not a real question but more a "joke" so if one should not expect a real "helpful" answer, but in the context of the thread where each answer given (by me and others) always reveals new 'contradiction' it is just a logical consequence.
And yes, things are changing, if it is "better" is not me to decide, it is just different ... and as Mickael mentioned we should simply be open to other workflows than hunting for "the one and only" that is always only a snapshot of our current understanding and best-practice changes every day.
So if there is a real problem to solve, we should solve it, if it is just because it was different in the past it might be better to accept that things are changing over time and make the best out of it. 


Am 12.09.22 um 09:48 schrieb Ed Merks:

Christoph,
Your last sentence is not actually helpful and not so nice. Folks who have been active for years or decades knew exactly what to do and how to do it.  With a new and different-though-better way that's suddenly not true anymore, and that  tends to make the old way seem better than the new better way.   So when someone who doesn't know all the details of the new (and better) way asks a question that has an obvious answer---obvious to you but not to them or they wouldn't ask it---simply answer it without value judgement.   Stephan's record of contribution to Eclipse speaks for itself: 

https://www.eclipse.org/org/foundation/eclipseawards/winners_lifetime.php

Stephan,
Yes, it's easy to contribute to a *.md via a browser without needing to clone the repo.  You can preview it to see if it looks as expected and then you can create a PR easily.  It's not so substantially different from a wiki...
Yes, the culture is different. Many more folks are involved who know the "git way" and to them everything is obvious, intuitive, and self-evident.  You often have to explain to them, "assume that I am stupid and know nothing" when asking a question because often the answer won't fully explain what you need to know, so you keep having to clarify the question to get a clearer answer.  This is not because of any ill intent, it's because it's easy to forget what's obvious and what's not. E.g., you might want to know how to do some git thing, implicitly meaning in the IDE with EGit, but the answer will be how to do it with the git command line...
I asked months ago about guidelines for how best to maintain a fork and how to push to it in order to create a PR and such.  I was told that no one really wants to spend time writing such documentation because it's kind of pointless given there is plenty of documentation on the internet how to do things like that.  That may well be true, but I couldn't find it and it seems there are multiple different ways...
E.g., one is often told to create a fork, and to clone that fork, as you see in the CONTRIBUTING.md.  Then you should create a "feature" branch (never commit to master/main) and push to that branch.  Creating the pull request requires visiting the browser. But I don't like that way because to keep your fork's master/main up to date you also need to visit the browser, and in my SDK setup with dozens of clones, that *way *too painful.  So I prefer to clone the original and to create an additional remote for my fork (if and when I need one) and then push the branch specifically to that remote.  Then I can easily switch back to master and pull from the original repo, never needing to keep my fork master/main up-to-date.  This highlights is another problem with such guidelines; does everyone agree on the best way and in the end, does it matter which way folks do it.  For this case, I suppose not, but for a contribute-and-review process there are two parties involved, so setting expectations up front seems quite important. 

Regards,
Ed

On 11.09.2022 16:31, Christoph Läubrich wrote:
If you open that page in a browser there is a tiny icon with a pencil on it labeled "edit this file" ...
But let me guess this leads to the question on how do I open a browser ...  so as each answer leads to a new question it seems it is impossible to contribute via github, compared to bugziilla/gerrit where everything was immediately clear ;-) 

Am 11.09.22 um 15:38 schrieb Stephan Herrmann:

Hi Zsombor,

These are valuable comments, from a persons directly affected.
Perhaps the discussion got derailed because people saw "rules" ("thou shalt do X") and were quick to reject anything limiting their freedom.
What you mention concerns the pursuit of helpful information ("how can I do Y?"), which doesn't require us to agree on any discipline.
Both kinds of discussions _could_ converge into a shared, living document "how do we do Z?". And that document should be posted right on the front door to JDT.
I should admit that I, too, bot derailed because I was always looking at the front door of JDT/Core, without bothering to look up one level: https://github.com/eclipse-jdt/.github/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md (Thanks Ed for reminding us). That document looks like a good start.
When I joined JDT the FAQ I mentioned before served as that shared document. I saw several committers joining the team (incl. myself), who had new questions, and once the information was collected, the newbie would first propose additions to that document, later they would directly edit the document.
I don't currently see this happening as a group effort. I'm not even sure, if this is due to the move from a legacy wiki page to a GitHub CONTRIBUTING page (is that what is happening?), or if the culture of this group has changed fundamentally.
And here's the meta question: how does one contribute to CONTRIBUTING.md? :):):) 
Is a PR needed for that?

best,
Stephan

Am 11.09.22 um 13:31 schrieb Zsombor Gegesy:
As one, who just started contributing a year ago, I could share my experience, that the barrier for contributions are extremely high, due to lack of documentation. I mean, other open source project generally have some sort of documentation/tutorials, especially if they are doing some non-conventional things. With lot of wasted hours of reading forums, year old blog posts, tuning google search, and trial-and-error, I could collect that information, but I'm still not sure, if there are simpler way to do this - I guess so, because every couple of months my environment gone haywire, so I need to start from scratch. As a wanna-be-contributor, I would expect: * how to get the source code, and how to setup my IDE? Originally, I tried to simply 'git clone ...' a couple of repos, and import into Eclipse, but it wasn't successful. Later found, that I need to use an 'advanced tab of 'Oomph' tool to install a separate IDE, which will also do the git checkout. (Of course, if that git operation times out, than you have to start from scratch) * how to start the project from the IDE? The launcher config is very complicated, and it take a lot of trial and error until I figured out, what projects should I close, what needs to be open, and certain errors reported at startup is just there. * how to build your changes into a working, shareable software, which can be used in other machines / by other people? Finally, I found, that I need to checkout the 'releng.aggregator' project, adjust the submodules, and after an hour of build, I will get the necessary binaries, that can be used in other installations.
Compared to these problems, for me it's feels minor thing, that if/when to rebase/squash/etc, but your mileage may vary. 

Zsombor
On Sun, 11 Sept 2022 at 11:22, Gunnar Wagenknecht <gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
     > On Sep 11, 2022, at 07:20, Christoph Läubrich <laeubi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
<mailto:laeubi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
     >
     > Just one question:
     >
     > Are there *that* many contributions to JDT that one really can reject a     valuable contribution just because the person uses (or dont uses) force 
    push? Just a thought...
    On the flip side, contributions are pointless if the subject matter expert     is not able to review them because they require additional work to process. 
    Thus, I think it's a matter of cooperation on being respectful.
    You can't optimize workflows for contributions only when the cost implies     dumping more work or requiring more time from committers/smes. In the case     of JDT, especially the compiler internals needs very careful reviews from a     subject matter expert. This might be different in other areas of JDT (eg JDT     UI). Thus, having those conventions or rules documented upfront for the     community (including some information were they apply or not apply) is not a     bad thing. You will be surprised of how open contributors can be when things 
    are communicated upfront.

    -Gunnar
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