Boxes and Glue

I got very surprised that a number of git hosting sites are literally providing an account for the mob. See for instance repo.or.cz description of the mob feature.

The idea that distributed scm is a great tool for anonymous contribution takes actually some time to percolate, at least it took to me. Being able to commit locally actually means that a structured representation of the intended change to the code exists. git, for instance, provides a clean way to export commits: git format-patch does basically it. I have  already spotted how, for instance, some people uses git-svn to have a local repo and uses it to send patches for Apache harmony (see the characteristic diff --git ...). A repository that can be found in repo.or.cz. Such a use case would be typical of in-house teams tracking a remote repository. Instead of cloning subversion with in-house subversion they do it with git, and each developer can have their own commits, merging them while one or more developers commit remotely. I have a couple of repos tracking Apache shindig and gajim, both in github.

Going back into the mob feature: the mob account is a wiki for commits. A step beyond the “I track your repo and send patches to your tracker” work flow. With the mob account everybody can commit on the mob branch, typically using their name for the commit. Everybody can also cherry pick those commits, and the gatekeeper(s) can apply them to the officialish repository. A brave new world, we are getting into! Somehow it remembers me the story (cyber legend?) about how a group of webmasters exchanged patches to get “a patchy server”.