<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">On Dec 2, 2022, at 17:21, Derick Rethans via tz <<a href="mailto:tz@iana.org" class="">tz@iana.org</a>> wrote:<div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">This problem would go away if you'd except change requests through GitHub's pull request feature. </span><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div><div class="">I for one heartily second this suggestion. While I understand that this can be a sensitive issue for some long-time contributors here, given the composition of TZDB’s audience (veteran coders plus the occasional technically non-sophisticated user), I think anything that simplifies the overall workflow while making the process more transparent to non-coders would be a net win.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><span class="" style="display: inline !important;">It's quite a common and modern method to propose changes to open source software, that I'd expect many would already be familiar with.</span></blockquote><br class=""></div><div class="">I agree. The GitHub pull request process has become a sort of _lingua franca_ in the code development realm, arguably more so than any other single methodology for managing distributed open source development. In that context, the current _status quo_ is rather *anti*-user friendly in the sense that many coders, when first encountering the TZDB GitHub repo think that they already know how to generate and submit patches; only later discovering that they in fact don’t, since what is arguably the central workflow metaphor of what makes GitHub useful has (seemingly inexplicably) been switched off. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">On the basis of the patches I’ve seen go by on this listserv over the past few years, it would also seem that “easing/reducing maintenance burden” has become a major goal for TZDB. Given that, I would respectfully argue that moving to a PR-based workflow would do more towards that end than any number of minor code polishing changes.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><div class="">On Dec 2, 2022, at 17:43, Paul Eggert via tz <<a href="mailto:tz@iana.org" class="">tz@iana.org</a>> wrote:</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">Yes, but GitHub has its own problems. I'd rather stick with email, just as many other projects use email for this sort of thing. </span></div></blockquote></div><div class=""><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">Well, this one at least does. FWIW, none of the other FOSS projects whose dev lists I follow use the traditional patches-via-email workflow any more. While by no means all of them use GitHub, what they all do use is some sort of system that provides automated patch generation/testing/merging along with a GUI option that allows non-coder types some level of visibility into the process.</span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><blockquote type="cite" class=""><span class="" style="display: inline !important;">Also, I've been thinking of moving the development repository off GitHub for other reasons, and I don't want to rely on GitHub-specific features.</span></blockquote><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">Would you care to share with us what some of those “other reasons” might be?</span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;">Cheers!</span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="float: none; display: inline !important;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">|---------------------------------------------------------------------|</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer |</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| | Paravel Systems |</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">|---------------------------------------------------------------------|</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the |</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| illusion of knowledge. |</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| |</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Menlo;" class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures" class="">| -- Daniel J. 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