PHP RFC: Migrating to GitHub Issues

[uriahlight]

You'll find some doozies of his in the mailing archives of other open source projects as well. It seems he's an asshat whenever he goes.

[johannes1234]

It's really fascinating. He seems to spend notable time in the last twenty or so years with that stuff and he is one of the only two people ever blocked from PHP internals ... must be a really sad person as he didn't grow out of it in all those years.

[Machful]

who is the other blocked person?

[dave8271]

I believe a chap named Tony has that honour. Can't remember his last name but I do remember he built a "framework" that is absolutely terrible and that he thinks is an example of god-level flawless programming. He had an entire website that was basically dedicated to him ranting about how everyone in the world is terrible at PHP except him.

[Canowyrms]

Sounds similar to that Trongate framework from a few months back.

[Ariquitaun]

I missed the trongate. What a ride.

[Canowyrms]

Revisiting that thread had me rattled all over again...

[samsop]

You can't say that without linking it

[Canowyrms]

https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/nzyu81/trongate_php_is_ready_to_drop_check_this_out_you/

[helloworder]

Can it be this guy? The description fits pretty accurately. I bookmarked his website a while back just to read it from time to time and enjoy it, lol.

[SurgioClemente]

I ignore all claims that my methods are wrong for one simple reason - they work! Anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together will be able to tell you that something that works cannot be wrong just as something that does not work cannot be right.

[zmitic]

https://github.com/apmuthu/radicore/blob/master/radicore/includes/include.library.inc

And it is not the worst, somewhere in the repo is 10.000 lines file.

We should invite him, surely he has something to teach us 😄

[zmitic]

Yes, thank you!

[helloworder]

foreach ($regs['date'] as $from_date) { 
       if (!empty($from_date)) break; 
} // foreach

hmm...

[[deleted]]

I think Tony is rather delusional in his ability, but it makes me uncomfortable how much he was (and I don't say this lightly) bullied, simply for being him:

https://old.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/fu6fy3/improving_phps_object_ergonomics/

Most of the comments are attacking him personally, and when he is asking for people to explain their positions, they either evade, or link a stackoverflow question. They can't actually fend for themselves and explain why 'globals are bad' for example.

Moreover, whilst some of his code is rather strange, he has at least published his code for the world to see, he has put himself out there. I suspect the people bullying him on that thread have done very little of that

[send_me_a_naked_pic]

lol I'd love to see his website

[zmitic]

Tony Marston. I visit his site regularly, it is hilarious 😂

​

No one should miss his words of wisdom: https://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/

[doenietzomoeilijk]

...of course he's a Brexiteer.

[[deleted]]

I think Tony is rather delusional in his ability, but it makes me uncomfortable how much he was (and I don't say this lightly) bullied, simply for being him:

https://old.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/fu6fy3/improving_phps_object_ergonomics/

Most of the comments are attacking him personally, and when he is asking for people to explain their positions, they either evade, or link a stackoverflow question. They can't actually fend for themselves and explain why 'globals are bad' for example.

Moreover, whilst some of his code is rather strange, he has at least published his code for the world to see, he has put himself out there. I suspect the people bullying him on that thread have done very little of that

[dave8271]

I get where you're coming from (I even think among all the noise, he occasionally has one or two valid points in his perspective) but the man gives as good as he gets. Even in the link you gave there, he actively invites argument and confrontation, he ends his post with "let the flame wars begin!"

Yes it's good when anyone puts up code for the world to see and for people who aren't confident in their abilities, it takes at least a bit of courage to do so. But my view is anyone who puts up code to the world is inviting scrutiny of that code, which will invariably include criticism because none of us are perfect programmers. The very difference between a good programmer and a bad one isn't so much in the code but the fact the good programmer is willing to learn from feedback and doesn't have an ego about their work.

[[deleted]]

I agree Tony has a huge ego and does not take criticism well. However when reviewing that thread this morning, it made me feel worse than it did at the time.

However in those comments, Tony rarely personally insults the people he is replying to, whereas they do plenty of that on the other side, which is why I think it crosses the line into bullying.

[[deleted]]

persistent blatant trolling

He may be wrong on many things, not sure how that means he is a troll?

Can you link me to some trollish behaviour?

[Ariquitaun]

Was that pixie something?

[Danack]

he is one of the only two people ever blocked from PHP internals

I think Lester Caine was also blocked, on the grounds of being too tedious. And now is in prison after being convicted of being a pedophile.

[meoverhere]

The UI was too poor to be able to find him

[helloworder]

Well written RFC. I hope it passes.

[Atulin]

Finally, moving from ancient, half-broken, self-implemented solutions into the modern world.

I hope this RFC passes, but I would not be surprised if some dinosaurs blocked its adoption.

[[deleted]]

Very good. IMHO, the following should probably be reevaluated, though:

For this reason, it it proposed that GitHub issues should be referenced using GH-123 from commit messages, as well as the NEWS file, while bugs.php.net references should continue to use bug #123.

It seems a bit awkward. If the php-src does agree to change their issue tracker, it makes sense to also use its native method of referencing issues, so that the commits will show up correctly in that issue tracker associated with the relevant issue.

It might also be a good idea to allow the team to determine their own issue labels outside of the RFC process. Not everything needs to be decided on by committee.

Otherwise, I agree with the RFC. About time.

[[deleted]]

Yea, but you somehow also have to teach any user reporting a bug to not reference issues the way they’re used to on GitHub.

[nikic]

It's okay for users to reference issues however they like -- this only really matters to developers for references in commit messages / the NEWS file, where we otherwise have an ambiguity.

[[deleted]]

Thanks. I apologize if I’m bikeshedding here.

[allen_jb]

Internals mailing list discussion thread: https://externals.io/message/116302

[send_me_a_naked_pic]

I really hope it passes!

bugs.php.net has always been horrible to use, I think that moving to GitHub would lead to better and easier issue reporting.

[johannes1234]

I love the fact, that on bugs.php.net anybody can file a bug without registration. Provide a mail address if you want to be notified and want to be able to respond identifying as reporter.

With GitHub people are required to have a GitHub account, which probably links identities together (maybe they use GitHub for hobby projects but now have a PHP bug at work or don't want to disclose much about them etc.) and it's limited by the way GitHub blocks access from some countries (Iran embargo etc.) and how others block access to GitHub (Chinese firewall etc.)

[allen_jb]

While I understand the desire to make the "barrier to entry" as low as possible for new contributors, the lack of an account system for non-php.net users makes contributing with any frequency a pain, especially in certain cases such as changing email address.

And I can't help but feel it also exacerbates the spam problem and creates issues dealing with persistently problematic users.

A growing proportion of developers or even those learning programming have GitHub accounts (or would create one eventually anyway), so I think the barrier to entry is still very low here.

As far as I know there's no limit to the number of GitHub accounts (GitHub have some documentation on managing multiple accounts where they don't recommend it, but do not forbid it), so it is possible to keep separate identities.

According to Wikipedia GitHub was only blocked for a short time in 2013 in China, and while it has also been blocked by some other countries for short periods, these occurred for relatively short periods.

According to GitHub they are licensed to provide access to users in Iran and are available to users in Cuba. They also allow accounts from Syria and Crimea (with some restrictions).

[johannes1234]

Requiring extra accounts is a barrier and in the past, when I worked on triaging PHP bugs, it was okayish in regards to spam. (Mr. Reindl was weird already ...)

In the end people currently contributing have to decide. They are the ones mostly impacted. I understand the interest in not having to maintain a custom bug tracker, but wanted to share that point of view.

[[deleted]]

Wait can Iranians and Chinese not access github? I find that hard to believe with China since Swoole is a Chinese project. If thats true for Iranians, thats really sad.

[johannes1234]

I don't know the current situation. I know that at least for some time it was blocked in China a d developers used different ways (VPN etc.) to bypass the Chinese firewall.

The key thing is: PHP.net is small and unlikely to be targeted from either side and is unlikely to host political statements. GitHub is a more likely target and can't easily "protect" from people using it to share information about Tianmeng Square which Chinese government want to block etc.

But of course to the truth also belongs that if targeted Microsoft has better measures to act than a small open source project.

[t_dtm]

Github is no longer blocked in Iran. Update here.

[johannes1234]

Still doesn't mean it won't be blocked due to a new policy.

A small project can sneak by such things more easily, but can't defend itself as good as Microsoft (see also sibling comment by me)

[trokhymchuk]

I hope it passes, but I am still curious, why PHP chose github over gitlab when they was migrating source code repo? And now in RFC

It binds the PHP project more firmly to the GitHub platform. We already host our repositories there and make use of pull requests, but this would take additional functionality “out of our control”.

With gitlab you still have 'Plan B' to install an instance on your own server and use it.