Our current policy is that we accept patches attached to JIRA case and pull requests to https://github.com/apache/calcite <https://github.com/apache/calcite>. I would like to propose that we no longer support patches.
Why? I argue that it makes the process easier for the committer. The pull request implicitly does “git add” and “git remove”, whereas when applying a patch you have to remember to apply these. The pull request comes in a branch, so if I modify the code as I am reviewing it, I can easily save and restore my state. Also, a pull request is “valid” as a contribution, from an IP standpoint, even when not accompanied by a JIRA case. Recently I went through 5 rounds of patches for a particular feature. I couldn’t tell what had changed between one iteration of the patch and the next (you can’t “diff" patches - you need to apply the patches to separate git branches and diff the branches - yuck!). And I went through 3 test cycles and 24 hours before I managed to “git add” all of the files. Yes, I did “git status” and I missed the 2 new files among all of the “.orig” and “.rej” files in my sandbox. In summary. I propose that we accept contributions only as pull requests to https://github.com/apache/calcite <https://github.com/apache/calcite>. If they are non-trivial they should be accompanied by a JIRA case. Committers can propose changes any way they like, as long as they commit the changes themselves, but if they want to make it easier for others to review, they should use either a personal git branch or a pull request. Julian
