[gentoo-dev] Re: On banning merge commits

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Rich Freeman posted on Sun, 08 May 2016 08:34:37 -0400 as excerpted:

> merges shouldn't just be used for random pull-requests.  However, when
> you're touching multiple packages/etc they should be considered.  They
> should also be considered if for some reason you had a bazillion commits
> to a single package that for some reason shouldn't be rebased.
> I imagine that they'll be a small portion of commits as a result.
> However, for the situations where they're appropriate they make a lot of
> sense.
> 
> This was some of Duncan's point, but I will comment that we'll never
> have as clean a history as the kernel simply because we don't have a
> release-based workflow with the work cascading up various trees.  The
> kernel is almost an ideal case for a merge-based workflow.  I imagine
> that half of Gentoo's commit volume is random revbumps and keyword
> changes and that is just going to be noise no matter what.  If we were
> release-based we could do that stuff in its own branch and merge it all
> in at once, but that just isn't us.

Recognized and agree.  Thanks.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman