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Comment by ElijahLynn | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions Linux pull requests. Does Linux contribution do actual pull requests now? Or is it still a mailing list?

If the latter, why would they say pull request?

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The term "pull request" comes from "git request-pull" which is the tool used by kernel subsystem maintainers to send emails to Linus to request he git pull from their branches (and merge them). This usage long predates the somewhat unrelated "pull request" feature of source forges (like GitHub) and is not confusing to kernel developers (the target audience of Linus's email).

The analogy to GitHub-like "pull requests" in the kernel workflow is "git send-email" (or "b4 send" nowadays) which sends patch series as individual emails that can be reviewed inline as a plain-text email and are applied onto maintainers' trees (usually with something akin to "git cherry-pick"). I still find this system to be a superior method to GitHub's "pull requests" (you can send review comments to commit descriptions -- which I believe Gerrit supports, but GitHub definitely doesn't -- and everything is sanely threaded since it's all email).

Here's an example pull request email from the start of the week[1], containing some VFS changes to be included in 6.17-rc1.

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250725-vfs-misc-599b4aef8eaa@b...

Thank you for explaining that, and the history! Thanks for the example too.

Pull requests took their name from the git request-pull script (which actually predates Github by a couple years): https://github.com/git/git/commit/ab421d2c7886341c246544bc8d...

It is called a pull request because you are asking someone to do a `git pull` from your branch.

"Pull requests" can also be done via a mailing list (it's literally a request to pull from some URL, see git-request-pull). It is not common on LKML, but I've seen it used that way. I think it's mostly maintainers that use it among themselves, everyone else just mails patches.

It's used by subsystem maintainers to request Linus pull their changes (it is literally the only mechanism Linus accepts from subsystem maintainers, outside of a few outliers like the -next tree). But yes, most regular developers don't use it -- it doesn't allow for inline patch-by-patch reviews like "git send-email" or "b4 send".

It's subsystem maintainers asking Linus to pull from their branches, e.g. https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/7/29/291

Its a terrible article.

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