Comparing Confusing Terms in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab

https://about.gitlab.com/2016/01/27/comparing-terms-gitlab-github-bitbucket/

by jratkevic • 10 years ago

104 43 10 years ago

about.gitlab.com

The terms GitLab uses in the first chart make a lot more sense from user experience point of view. They match how a person might describe what they're doing in English before having seen any of these tools. Good work to whoever on their team was responsible for that.

sytse6• 10 years ago

Thanks! Even though few of the early developers were native English speakers we do care a lot about naming. For me it became something very important after learning about Domain driven design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design

nickpsecurity2• 10 years ago

Even more interesting that it was a second language. Also, I didn't know about DDD. Thanks for the reference!

contingencies2• 10 years ago

Cute! I was wondering why Gitlab uses MR and whether Gitlab has a better term just the other day, because I figured it was such an illogical phrase. As it happens, I am in the middle of installing Gitlab again on a newly reconfigured server and this popped up!

Then I thought "Hey, why not use the docker image?" (reeling from deep pain from the last time I tried to upgrade an LXC-based Gitlab instance across major versions), then I wondered if I needed aufs, then I wound up reading presentations about storage drivers (zfs FTW, but shame on docker for wanting an entire zpool to itself!), then decided overlay was better (and in-kernel), then I wanted to switch to a PaX kernel, now I've got a day of recompilation and installations ahead of me. But I will be glad to know MRs lie at the end ;) +1 docker bug: https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/20303

sandGorgon2• 10 years ago

Quick answer - given by a docker developer here.

Use native devicemapper (using an lvm mounted volume). Best, fastest and least buggy.

Overlay was flagged as massively buggy.

contingencies2• 10 years ago

Overlay was flagged as massively buggy.

Source?

I was not planning to use LVM because it's documented[0] as slow and resource hungry... full copy each time, massive memory use, etc.

CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS is mainline kernel code (unlike aufs) and not marked as experimental so if docker's implementation is buggy it is more likely to be docker's fault. It is documented by docker as being generally fast.[1]

Regardless, I don't see performance as a great concern for my workloads... I'm more interested in the workflow enhancements.

[0] https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/devic... [1] https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/overl...

redindian75• 10 years ago

Merge is so much clearer (as a non-coder). I've always wondered why its called Pull Request - When as a contributor, you are pushing your code into someone else's codebase and merging it going forward.

nightpool2• 10 years ago

Actually, that's not what's happening. What's happening is that the project maintainer is pulling in your changes, from your repository. It's a decentralized vs centralized thing.

mikegioia• 10 years ago

I think the word ordering is confusing, though. It's a Push Request and a Request to Pull.

zyxley• 10 years ago

I think you're missing the forest for the trees for here. It may technically be a pull, but the thought process involved is most typically "I want to send my code over to _____".

desdiv• 10 years ago

What's happening is that the project maintainer is pulling in your changes, from your repository.

Then how come the following is possible?

1. I submit a pull request to Bob.

2. I delete my repository.

3. Bob successfully accepts my pull request.

Where is Bob pulling from if my repository is already gone?

Semantically you are correct, of course, but Github's current implementation doesn't reflect that.

spdustin2• 10 years ago

The "Gist" comparison isn't really apples-to-apples. GitHub Gists are actually git repositories themselves, and can be cloned/pulled/merged/pushed/etc. Gitlab Snippets are assets connected to the project. I remember a feature request a while back to make Gitlab Snippets more like GitHub Gists, but can't seem to find it on the actual Gitlab project's issues section now.

Huge fan of Gitlab, though. We're about to migrate from BitBucket Server née Stash to Gitlab CE.

sytse6• 10 years ago

I would love to see git backed snippets as well, I made a feature proposal for it https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/13426

voltagex_3• 10 years ago

I used Gists quite a lot for a while, then things like the TIL post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902) and http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/talks/junkcode.pdf made me realise that a lot of things are better off in full Git repos.

Maybe that says more about the Gist UI than anything else. I still think there's a chance for a Git-backed OneNote clone to really take off - if you hid Git away for normal users it would be really powerful.

I think some concept of scratch/temporary repositories might be better than a Gist-style thing, but Gist with a better UI might work too.

holman• 10 years ago

For what it's worth, GitHub came up with the awkwardly-sounding "Pull Request" nomenclature because the initial cut of Pull Requests was based on `git-request-pull(1)` (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull). After a few years, the pull request evolved into what you see today.

We always kind of hated the term "pull request". It's pretty confusing for a beginner, and for a number of years led to the idea that GitHub didn't have code review at all in the product. (For that reason, I always thought we should just call them "Code Reviews", or just "Reviews".) There were a number of attempts to change it, but they all died.

It wasn't until last year when I got a beer with an ex-Atlassian employee when we chatted about this and realized we both had hated the term and had a number of attempts to change the nomenclature, but they fizzled out. Funny how things work out.

carussell• 10 years ago

... well yeah it's confusing, but that's what happens when you cajole people into using a pull-based model so that the company can capitalize on those highly desirable market conversion/retaining effects that you wouldn't have gotten if you had done the natural thing and supported the traditional unit of change, i.e., patches.

End result: people are confused and using a procedure that's more complex than what most of their contributions call for, but that goes away when you remember what the numbers for the company are.

sytse6• 10 years ago

Cool to hear what your thoughts on it are. I only learned about git-request-pull until after we named it merge requests, only then did I understand why it was named like that.

curun1r2• 10 years ago

FWIW, despite the awkwardness of the pull request terminology, Gitlab's merge request terminology was one of the major reasons why we ended up choosing GHE over Gitlab. Pull Request, among developers, has become like Kleenex, Xerox or any of the host of brand names that are linked with the generic concept they implement. In most conversations, developers here have stopped even saying the words...it's just PR without any thought to why it's named that. Trying to force a switch to MR would have been a difficult transition. In the end, it was easier to just pony up for GHE.

It may seem superficial, but if there's some way that you could give users the option to surface the pull request terminology rather than merge request, even if it's just a configuration option, you may find people more receptive to your product.

scrollaway• 10 years ago

At this point I think "pull request" is part of the developer's terminology but "merge request" is just as likely to be clearly understood.

BTW, sytse, what's the best address to contact you about gitlab? There's something I'd like your thoughts on.

Pxtl3• 10 years ago

Yeah, first thing I have to explain to git newbies is that a pull request is really effectively a merge-request.

voltagex_3• 10 years ago

I'm pulling the changes you've made into my (upstream?) repository. It's not the best name, but it makes sense. Maybe I've been using Git for too long.

I found fetch/rebase/merge to be more difficult to wrap my head around (and I still can't do an interactive rebase/squash)

the_mitsuhiko2• 10 years ago

I might be in the minority here but i hate the term "merge request" because it implies an actual merge. Most pull requests I get against my repos are bugfixes which I typically cherry-pick or rebase against a bugfix branch but very rarely do I actually merge anything.

paulddraper2• 10 years ago

Every tool I know of merges pull requests.

the_mitsuhiko2• 10 years ago

Like git pull --rebase and rebase --onto?

yodon• 10 years ago

From a process standpoint, merge-request is probably more accurate, but I've always thought pull-request captured the hearts and minds of developers because it better represents how the requester feels about the request.

"Pull request" communicates "I just did a bunch of work, please recognize it and me." "Merge request" communicates "I just did something that is going to make your life hard, please do a bunch of work on my behalf." The later may be more accurate but the former is more emotionally satisfying to the dev making the request.

Edit: reducing verbosity

shmerl• 10 years ago

Merge request sounds better to me than pull request. I always found the later an awkward term to describe the merge into the master branch.

Comparing Confusing Terms in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab

Related Stories