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by cballard
3730 days ago
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Small PRs are an issue because PRs are dependent on other users and can't be dependent on a prior PR. Let's say we're adding an interface/typeclass/protocol and a concrete implementation. I'd say these should be two separate commits, as they're adding two different things. An interface doesn't require a provided implementation to work. But, if we were to create those as two separate pull requests, it would be more work for the project maintainers, and the initiator wouldn't be able to create the PR for the concrete implementation until the interface PR was merged - the concrete PR can't be added as a dependent PR of the interface one, or something to that effect. Since you can "compare" almost anything on Github, small commits aren't really an issue, just view a larger-scope comparison to get an idea of the whole PR. Another way to put this might be that commits are for individual code changes that build up to a pull request, which is a conceptual change? |
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This pinpoints the major problem exactly. Without dependencies between PRs there's really no sane way (with this feature enabled) to submit a series of commits while expecting those commits to remain separate.
Oh, and I object to the general sentiment in the responses to your post that seem to value drive-by/inexperienced contributors over the "experts". Yes, we definitely should make things as easy/simple as possible for new contributors, but NOT at the expense of adding a gotcha for expert contributors. The experts are what keep a project going over many years instead of just releasing version upon version of trivial spelling fixes.
(And, btw, the default "merge" option for GitHub PRs also sucks. It should be possible to simply disallow non-FF merges and to force all merges to be FF. EDIT: Interestingly, this seems to be about the only workflow explicitly forbidden by the new rules... unless, of course, you're willing to merge everything manually using your local copy of the repo and pushing from that to GH.)