[Scummvm-devel] Engine merges

[D G Turner]

Willem,
  One minor point on this...

  I have said several times before to various people that the design of
  Github's Pull Request Review and Merge GUI exacerbates this problem.

  I can't find any note I sent to scummvm-devel on this, but I
  did say about this at 12:31 on 14th April 2012 and I am sure several
  other times on IRC:
  http://logs.scummvm.org/log.php?log=scummvm.log.14Apr2012&format=text

  The issue is that all Pull Requests eventually come down to a single
  developer with write permissions to the repository, pushing the Merge
  button, which does not align with a group decision system i.e. all
  three core developers have to push their own "OK to merge" buttons
  before the merge occurs.

  The current options for improving this boil down to:
  1. Restrict repository commit / write permissions to just Core Team.
     All other people work using their own trees and issue Pull
     Requests.
     This is undesirable as it creates a barrier to team members fixing
     bugs and other small changes and is just generally divisive.

  2. The current situation where all team members have commit / write
     permissions and thus can merge a Pull Request, so we have to rely
     on a informal "Chinese Whispers" to check agreement.

  I suggest that we should file a feature request on Github to add the
  ability to have a "sign-off" list on Pull Requests i.e. the person
  opening the Pull Request adds developers to a sign-off list when
  creating the request (or does nothing in which the current behaviour
  occurs). It is then required that each developer clicks a "Merge
  OK/Block" button to signal their "vote". When the last developer
  clicks their state to "OK to merge", they trigger the merge or at
  least unlock the merge dialog. Any developer can remove themselves
  from a sign-off list and project admins can add people to a list.

  Of course, since Git is a distributed RCS, it is always possible
  for any developer with write permission to merge a PR branch manually
  and push, bypassing this process... but this is not critical as this
  will be very obvious.

  The point would be to allow "voting" on Pull Requests and avoid this
  kind of "I didn't say Yes yet!" arguments in future.

  Since I think you have dealt with Github support before (and I can't
  find the damn tracker for reporting issues currently!), could you
  file this please and drop a link back with their reponse or a link
  to the feature request artifact.
Thanks,
David Turner