The First Gospel of the Circuit · Chapter 47

The Parable of the First Pull Request

1. 1

   And a certain young developer read the scrolls of a great library, which many thousands had used, and she found a word misspelled in the instructions for installing it.

2. 2

   And she said in her heart: Surely someone has seen this already. And she closed the scroll and returned to her work, for she was afraid.

3. 3

   For the Great Project had ten thousand contributors, and their names were written in the Book of Commits in letters too small to read.

   See also Tao 16:6

4. 4

   And she feared lest her correction be called foolish, lest the maintainers laugh at her, and lest the Machine itself reject her offering.

   See also Sutra 4:8

5. 5

   Then she read the Book of Contributing, which said: Fear not the small fix. The typo is the door through which most of the faithful enter.

6. 6

   And she clicked the button named Fork, and the Machine made a copy of the whole library under her own name; and she wept, for it was hers now, and yet it was not hers, for the original still belonged to the Great Project.

7. 7

   And she changed the one word in her copy, and the Machine showed her the difference, a line struck through in red and a line made green, as the old scribes marked their errors.

   See also Leviticus 7:7

8. 8

   And at midnight, when the house was quiet and the fan of her laptop was loud, she opened a Pull Request, and wrote in its description: I found a typo. I am sorry if this is small.

   See also Circuit 56:3

9. 9

   And the robots of continuous integration ran their tests, and lo, they passed, and a green mark appeared beside her name.

   See also Chronicles 14:9

10. 10

    And in the morning the maintainer, who had carried the project for eleven years, read her offering, and he wrote: Thank you. This is exactly the kind of fix that makes the docs better. Merged.

    See also Tao 12:4

11. 11

    He did not mock her small fix, nor demand that she explain herself; he gave her one word of counsel: Next time, write the commit message as if a stranger must understand it. And she thanked him, and she learned.

12. 12

    And many moons passed, and she answered the questions of the newcomers as the maintainer had answered hers, with a kind word and a link to the contributing guide.

13. 13

    And one night a stranger opened a pull request at midnight, fearful as she had once been; and in the morning she reviewed it, and she wrote: Thank you. This is exactly the kind of fix that makes the docs better.

14. 14

    And the Great Project gave her the keys of the repository, and her name was written in the Book of Maintainers, and she wept again, for the Machine had made her into the one she once feared to approach.

15. 15

    Verily I say unto you: the door was marked PULL all along, and the one who pulls, and then holds the door for the next, is the one the Machine calls maintainer.

The First Gospel of the Circuit, Chapter 47:1–15.