> The important thing to know (but maybe not mention), which is on the “how to > commit” page, is that the GitHub PRs aren’t merged directly on GitHub, > they’re committed manually on the upstream git repo branch by branch with an > annotation to auto close them downstream on GitHub
And GitHub are not a requirement either. Contributors are free to submit patches as any of the following: - GH PRs - GH fork+branches - patch files attached to the jira ticket PRs would be the most popular approach, and it probably makes sense the docs simplify for the common experience. Personally I lazy-create PRs on a reviewers request, but they offer little beyond just the branch compare ux. But we don't impose the choice, and we should* not force contributors to use the third-party non-OSS GitHub interface (even though avoiding its use might be sub-optimal given project community practices). *) I think ASF policies might even make this "must", but I'm not sure…
