CONTRIB: Please don't send pull requests

diff --git a/docs/CONTRIBUTE b/docs/CONTRIBUTE
index 53e484284270114b8ccc632cf3a2e1cdc71a8390..262af48861e45c0ae466f6588b9535930a705247 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/CONTRIBUTE
+++ b/docs/CONTRIBUTE
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@
  3.3 How To Make a Patch without git
  3.4 How to get your changes into the main sources
  3.5 Write good commit messages
+ 3.6 Please don't send pull requests
 
 ==============================================================================
 
@@ -276,3 +277,27 @@
  and make sure that you have your own user and email setup correctly in git
  before you commit
 
+3.6 Please don't send pull requests
+
+ With git (and expecially github) it is easy and tempting to send a pull
+ request to one or more people in the curl project to have changes merged this
+ way instead of mailing patches to the curl-library mailing list.
+
+ We don't like that. We want them mailed for these reasons:
+
+ - Peer review. Anyone and everyone on the list can review, comment and
+   improve on the patch. Pull requests limit this ability.
+
+ - Anyone can merge the patch into their own trees for testing and those who
+   have push rights can push it to the main repo. It doesn't have to be anyone
+   the patch author knows beforehand.
+
+ - Commit messages can be tweaked and changed if merged locally instead of
+   using github. Merges directly on github requires the changes to be perfect
+   already, which they seldomly are.
+
+ - Merges on github prevents rebases and even enforces --no-ff which is a git
+   style we don't otherwise use in the project
+
+ However: once patches have been reviewed and deemed fine on list they are
+ perfectly OK to be pulled from a published git tree.