github reading-list

When you see a small bug or error in a repository, a common refrain is to submit a pull request to fix it. To submit a pull request with a correction is an act of kindness to the maintainers. It allows the maintainers to review the change and accept it with a click.

But it's a bit of a heavyweight operation for the person submitting the fix. Chances are they don't have write access to the repository. Thus to submit a fix, the person must fork the repository to their account first. The forked repository pollutes their list of repositories (unless they delete the fork). Then they have to edit the file and create a pull request. All this effort because they wanted to correct "their"to "there."

A person might decide to forget all that and specify the change in a comment on the repository instead. But now that puts the work on the maintainer to review the comment and redo the specified change. Chances are, it's too much trouble and they don't get around to it.

It would be nice if a person could suggest the exact change in a comment. And that the maintainer could accept the change with a click or two. Well good news, there is! GitHub has a suggested Changes feature that does this. It's been around since October 2018, but is still not that well-known.

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