Re: merge conlict?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Karl Fogel writes:

 > Is the problem that some people are saying that all the internal commits
 > on your local branch should be clean & buildable & lint-free, in
 > addition to the final merge being similarly clean?

Nobody is saying that.  What some people are saying is that all
*external* commits you push to a *global* repository should be clean
and/or buildable and/or lint-free.  AFAIK Linux demands that, and I'm
sure there are other projects that do, although I don't know of them
offhand.

 > The final merge needs to be of publishable quality, of course -- it's
 > going on the mainline.  But the commits that led up to it?  That's
 > really up to the committer(s).  No one else ever has to build those
 > commits, after all.

They don't *have* to, but they might *want* to.  Eg, bisect.