Contribute without a github account?

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There are many reasons not to have a github account, but there are also reasons why one could not be able to create one (most notably sanctions). How can people contribute to nix without possessing a github account?

The topic came up in maintainers: make email optional by ncfavier · Pull Request #209165 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub but I don’t think a PR is the best plce to discuss it. If this has already been discussed (I couldn’t find a post), a link to the relevant discussion would be welcome.

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I don’t know if this is still active, but there’s a mailing-list-based workflow that has been used in the past:

cc @andir

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That is for nixpkgs, not nix.

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Thanks. I’ll try that out for my PR and see what it’s like. Maybe it should be added to CONTRIBUTING.md or the contributing section of the nix/nixpkgs manuals.

I don’t know if moving away from Github to something that supports these out of band contributions or even issue creation is something that has been discussed before. With https://forgejo.org/ (Gitea fork focusing on federation), maybe that’ll be possible someday.

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Great topic.

I’m unlikely to ever have a github account.

I can’t imagine the community considering moving away from github in the forseeable future, but it would be great to have an alternative, at least for making small contributions.

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@andir I created a simple PR for nixpkgs and submitted it. I do have a github account, but since that’s on the chopping board, it’d be nice to experience the process through your repo. nixpkgs is the biggest reason I’m on github atm, so if that can be resolved, it’d be a big step for me.

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