the mail is not made for version control, github is. Why you would prefer a static way of doing things, from a very dynamic website ?
When you commit to a github repo everyone that watches that repo , that is everyone that is either a contributor to that repo or a github user that has clicked the watch button will be alerted about everything related to that repo. The alerts appear in the front page of
github.com when you log in. That includes commits, pull requests, new branches, issues, bugs, feature requests you name it. You could link that feed to your email so you get email alerts but personally I prefer keeping my email seperate from version controlling stuff.
The advantages of github are too numerous to go in detail here, just read the github documentation. But to be put short, its easy to link towards other commits, you can comment commits , you can even comment specific lines of code (even using markdown ),�� and edit and commit on the fly using the website without opening pharo or git pulling to your local repo. Personally I would prefer to see a lot more pull requests because they are a very nice way to chain commits together and view them as one entity since they will concern the same matter. Pull requests also can be chained to issues and bug reports to mark the closed or open.��