I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. Pull requests aren’t even a concept in git proper, right?
It seems like a kind of important type of tool. Even though git is awesome, we don’t need a monoculture.
git request-pull
Generates a pretty email requesting someone to pull commits from your online repository. It's really meant for Linus to pull a whole bunch of already-reviewed changes from a maintainer's integration branch.
The rough equivalent to GitHub's "pull request" is the "patch series", produced by:
git format-patch
Which lets you provide a "cover letter" (PR description), and formats each commit as a diff that can be quoted inline in an email reply for code review.
Interesting that DAG model means any branch from anywhere can be merged... the forge is just coordination.
Explored here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/git-graph-theory-logic
I would argue that it was purposefully designed in contrast against that model.
GitHub is full of git anti patterns.
GitHub is a social networking site that just so happens to have code hosting related features.
It's as much a social network/collaboration tool as it is place to store your code these days.
But it took a big brain with a systemic view of the problem and solutions space to bring them all together - in a lighting fast implementation to boot.
1. it was free;
2. it was sponsored by the most fashionable project of the time (Linux);
3. it did not require a server;
4. because it was FOSS, people could extend it without asking anyone's permission; and...
5. ...once GitHub appeared, simplifying the PR process, the network effect did its thing.
Git was hard to use and to understand. It did not win on technical features alone, as you said there were plenty of alternatives. It won because of community and network effects.
So is ffmpeg and ImageMagick. Or Blender. Or Freecad. There are domains that do require some learning and training to properly use the available tool.
So the maintainer adds you as a remote and pulls from you.
Edit: see "git request-pull" as mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) but what it does is write "a pretty email" (the other poster's words) to STDOUT.
What? Is the intention, that I access your C: drive? Also is it common to have a file:// link on MS Windows? I thought this was a unix thing.
I think the file:/// is so that you can fire off "[cmd /c] start FILEPATH" to load the default browser, while also not having to worry about spaces in the path.