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by dry_soup 1039 days ago
Linux kernel development happens on Git. In fact, Git was created for the Linux kernel. Maybe instead of Git you mean GitHub? I can't find a link now, but if I remember right there was a brief period when Linux kernel development had to move to GitHub. Maybe when kernel.org got hacked? Linus Torvalds didn't like the way that GitHub formatted merge commits [1] (from a later date, but I think it was the same issue).

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjbtip559HcMG9VQLGPmkurh5...

3 comments

Yeah, github Web UI tend to generate low quality commit message that's not up to the standard set by the kernel developers: no oneline short log, long lines, no signed-off line, etc. Linus simply refuses to let those kind of commits into the Kernel.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...

> Maybe instead of Git you mean GitHub

Without involving github at all, you can use git directly to push branches to a remote repository and then have it be merged by the maintainers there, which leads to a workflow that's pretty similar to the one you have with github.

Instead, Linux is being worked on by exporting the (git) patches and sharing them on a mailing list, effectively not using a significant feature of git and leading to a very different workflow than the one everyone else is using (github users and others alike), so I still find the question legitimate.

>> Instead, Linux is being worked on by exporting the (git) patches and sharing them on a mailing list

Once configured, you can send a series of patches to the mailing list with a single git command, and with just another command apply a series of patches from the mailing list. It's actually quite efficient.

TIL; thanks
The kernel is certainly mirrored on GitHub[0], but it's not the centre of development.

[0] - https://github.com/torvalds/linux

I'm aware of that mirror. What I'm talking about in my comment is that there was a time when the development of the Linux kernel actually moved to GitHub, due to problems with the regular Linux kernel development infrastructure.
Don’t remember Linux, but PHP moved development to GitHub after a security incident: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/113838