I have nothing against patches, but I also have nothing against a policy
to only accept PR's.
Julian Hyde wrote:
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
