I started trying to modernize the merge script in parquet-java [1] and the question came up on whether we want to require using a merge script at all.
At least for parquet-format I think people have been merging for a while using squash and merge. I'm not sure what people are doing for parquet-java but given that the script was never upgraded to python3 I suspect most people are using github as well. I think the main benefits a merge script provides are: 1. Being able to link each PR to a milestone. This becomes more important since the move away from JIRA to Github issues since it allows people to understand which release a certain PR belongs to. 2. Automatic closing of the issue. 3. Allowing for easily backporting fixes to other release branches. It is possible that there might be a way to automate some or all of these with Github actions (or some other github automation) but I don't have much familiarity with this. So the main question is should we maintain and require usage of a merge script? If the answer is yes, I'd propose creating a new repo that has just the merge script that can be linked into parquet-format and parquet java via git submodule. Thoughts? Thanks, Micah [1] https://github.com/apache/parquet-java/pull/1373
