pushing vs. patch-review + countdown

[Graham Percival]

I think we're leaning slightly towards being overly cautious.
Here's little unofficial note about when to push stuff.

(these guidelines may change if/when we have a GOP policy
question(s) in the next few weeks; this email should not be seen
as detracting from any future policy discussions)


Developers have push access because we trust them, both to not be
malicious, and also to be reasonable.  You should push a patch
if, and only if:
  you think that nobody will complain about it.

That's it.


More details:
1. I will complain extremely bitterly if it breaks make.
2. I will complain nastily if it breaks a regtest comparison.
3. I will complain if you push something I wanted to comment on.
4. notwithstanding the above, I will never complain about a
   patch that has gone through an official patch countdown.

We're still sorting out a backlog in the patches -- and that will
be much worse right after the fixx.py run on Aug 01 -- but by the
end of August, we should have the countdown such that any patch
without problems will be officially accepted within 96 hours.  I
think that's an acceptable amount of worst-case delay for a
perfect patches.

If you want to avoid the countdown, then it really hinges on
point 3.  That's most difficult to judge, but you have git push
access because you've been around for a while.  You should have a
fairly good idea of what I like to comment on, what Trevor likes
to comment on, Neil, Han-Wen, Joe, etc etc.


To pick a completely hypothetical example: if you're working on an
obscure aspect of the parser, which virtually nobody understands
or cares about, and you're totally certain that your patch will
cause no problems and nobody wants to talk about it... then go
ahead and just push.

If you happened to be incorrect about thinking that nobody would
want to talk about your patch, and somebody complains... well,
just remember that the next time you're wondering if you should
just push vs. waiting for the countdown.  It's not the end of the
world.  You could even view it as a game, or like making a bet!
:)

Cheers,
- Graham