This recent pull request
https://github.com/nhibernate/nhibernate-core/pull/3 opens up an interesting
challenge for us now that we are on github: how should we handle pull
requests that don't have a correlated JIRA issue against them?  This pull
does mention an issue (NH-1280) but is actually a NEW issue related to
something suggested to be a problem with the fix introduced for NH-1280 (and
so IMO it should probably be logged as a new issue).

My inclination is to tell people making pull requests that we have a policy
that pulls without correlated JIRA issues aren't accepted, just as we never
accepted SVN patches without a related JIRA issue.  This was easier to
'enforce' with SVN b/c one needed the JIRA issue to attach the patch to in
the first place but of course github makes it possible to circumvent that
'requirement' and issue an 'orphaned' pull request with no related JIRA
issue (as seems to have been done in the case of this one).

The challenge with something like github's pull-interface is that there are
now potentially TWO places to 'discuss' the issue and any patch/pull related
to it: JIRA and github.  Fragmenting discussion of patch/pull submissions
into multiple systems seems to me to be a bad/dangerous thing to support,
but it also introduces an extra requirement on those forking and offering
pull requests, potentially damping one of the stated goals of moving to
github in the first place (increased ease of contribution by a wider group
of participants).

What are others' thoughts on the best way to handle this...?

Steve Bohlen
[email protected]
http://blog.unhandled-exceptions.com
http://twitter.com/sbohlen

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