Comment by paxys
3 hours ago
It isn't arbitrary. A branch is the unit of change. You can stack branches on top of each other and merge them one at a time. You can also keep adding to the end of the stack as needed.
3 hours ago
It isn't arbitrary. A branch is the unit of change. You can stack branches on top of each other and merge them one at a time. You can also keep adding to the end of the stack as needed.
I understand that GitHub kinda ate the world on this, but using a branch PR as the basic unit of change seems like an arbitrary choice to me.
Torvalds invented Git for work on the Linux kernel, and the basic unit of change there is commits over email. It's not uncommon for them to take some commits but reject others.
Which isn't meant to say "pull requests are obviously wrong and commits over email are obviously correct", but rather to point out that the idea of a take-it-or-leave-it branch isn't some kind of natural unit of contribution
https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1402.2/00508.html
https://lkml.indiana.edu/2011.2/05416.html
https://lkml.iu.edu/2409.0/00960.html
https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2510.3/01369.html