[petsc-dev] Pushing non-working code

[Jed Brown]

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Hong Zhang <hzhang at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:

> 'petsc-dev' means 'dev', that a developer should be able to push on-going
> work
> after he/she does local tests and is willing to fix the warning/bug as
> soon as
> the problems appear. Personally, I am unable to write a bug/waring free
> code,
> not matter how much effort and time to put into it.
>

There is a difference between

1. Pushing code that you believe to work, preferably with tests that show
that it works in at least some case. This code is meaningful for other
people to look at. In a project with strict quality control, this code
would not be merged until other people have had a chance to look at it.

2. Pushing code as a sort of personal checkpoint that really only asserts
that it compiles (perhaps with warnings). This is useless to push because
it causes other people to step over your dead code and quick-fix your
warnings. Worse, it confuses the history so that we can no longer look at
the sequence of patches that implemented a new feature.

If you wait to push, then the patch series is coherent in the history, and
there is one merge commit explaining what was merged.
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