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What do y'all think about mailing lists and IRC as sole communication channels? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Say you want to contribute to a project and find out the only way to do so is by discussing the issue on IRC or the mailing list, then submitting the patch per email.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Mailing lists intimidate me but I haven't ever tried to communicate by one. IRC is probably fine.

I'll be honest though, I'm not going to submit a patch to a mailing list unless there are pretty clear and easy instructions. Forking a project and opening a pull request on whatever forge (like GitHub, GitLab, and others) is easy. I probably do it once every three months or so when I find a bug I know I can fix. Mailing lists are just enough trouble (with my current level of understanding) that I'm probably not going to do it.

I'll give an example. I found a bug in the JDK that was fixed in 17 but not in 11 and I was trying to figure out how to report it or backport it myself. It was crazy the amount of hoops I needed to jump through and I gave up. I'm not saying the project should be different so it fits my needs or anything, I'm just using this as an example of hurdles discouraging me from contributing. I think the vast majority of devs are probably at the same place and don't want to fool with mailing lists. (I'm not saying projects should stop using them.)