[hibernate-dev] Retrospective on "Pull Requests": a waste of time?

[Hardy Ferentschik]

>> What is the definition of not fully on topic. I would not suggest a change in
>> class X for a pull request where only class Y and Z are affected. However,
>> if class X is touched and I see a potential improvement I think it can be considered 
>> being part of the topic. Boy Scout rule number one:" Always leave the campground 
>> cleaner than you found it."  I truly believe in this one, but of course sometimes a 
>> potential improvement would have too big of a ripple effect to be pursued.
> 
> I think that's the crux of the disagreement.

To a degree yes.

> Disclaimer, it depends but if the cumulated changes take 5 mins or 3 hours things vary.

There is for sure a limit where we are not talking about keeping the campground clean anymore.

> Breaking the flow of a small or medium sized PR can be problematic IMO. 

What is "breaking the flow" of a pull request? Are you saying that just because the reviewer 
of the pull request discovered potential points of improvement or suggests other fixes, it
breaks the work flow of submitter of the pull request, because he did not get an immediate merge?

What's the point of reviewing if we are not able to discuss potential improvements. Do you want
feedback or do you want someone to press the merge button? 

If your work really depends on this one particular pull request being merged I argue that you should not
have submitted it and do a combined pull request. Or as mentioned before just keep on working on
your local branch. You have plenty of choices to proceed and there is no need to be blocked on a pull request.

The only problematic case I see is, if there is an immediate release required, because an external consumer (e.g Infinispan requiring an updated
version of Search with a specific bug fix). However, that is not what we have been talking about here.

The moment you submit a pull request you are saying that you want this work to be reviewed and merged
to master. At this point you have to be willing to deal with the feedback. If not, the whole procedure becomes pointless.

> The other problem is that we all have a different degree of perfection: what is unacceptable for one is ok for another.

Sure. That's probably a good thing. We also tend to have different strength when it comes to certain areas of functionality or type
of problems. That's a good thing imo. It means that sometimes you get comments about something you have not thought about.

> We are generally in agreement but that only makes disagreements more energetic ;)

As much as I enjoy this discussion, right now we have 0 open pull request in Search. 
So where is the problem?

--Hardy