Fun fact: part of the reason that this article is on HN, I believe, is because I linked it to someone on another site as a means of explaining stacked diffs.
> It looks like they reinvented commits as dependent PRs.
Sort of kind of. It really depends on what you mean by PR: if we're talking about "review this branch please," which is what I would argue most mean by PRs, then yes, in the context of "stacked PRs for GitHub" it's largely about tooling that makes dependent PRs easier.
But there are other, non-GitHub tools. With those tools, you don't say "here's a branch, review it please," you say "here is a stack of commits, review them please." There's no branch going on inside. It's just a sequence of commits. This matters because it centers the commit as the unit of code review, not a branch. This also means that you can merge parts of the stack in at different times: to use the example from the article, once "small refactor" is good to go, it can be landed while "new API" is awaiting review. etc.
I think it takes actually using some of these tools to really "get it." I never understood them either, until I actually messed around with them. I am currently on my project solo, so I don't really stack at the moment, I think it really helps more the larger of a team you're working with is.
Oh hey, thanks for the explanation! I’ve been wondering about this for a while. The linked articles on HN tended to be heavy on arguing how unlike the workflow is to what “you are used to” that the description of what it was about got obfuscated.
I’ve used Git with email a little bit which also lets you review commits in isolation. It’s too bad that so many review tools bury the commits (ask me how many times someone at work has asked “what this is about” on the PR diff when the relevant commit message explains exactly that).
But what I like about email is that the whole series/PR also gets reviewed as a unit. Both worlds.
> It looks like they reinvented commits as dependent PRs.
Sort of kind of. It really depends on what you mean by PR: if we're talking about "review this branch please," which is what I would argue most mean by PRs, then yes, in the context of "stacked PRs for GitHub" it's largely about tooling that makes dependent PRs easier.
But there are other, non-GitHub tools. With those tools, you don't say "here's a branch, review it please," you say "here is a stack of commits, review them please." There's no branch going on inside. It's just a sequence of commits. This matters because it centers the commit as the unit of code review, not a branch. This also means that you can merge parts of the stack in at different times: to use the example from the article, once "small refactor" is good to go, it can be landed while "new API" is awaiting review. etc.
I think it takes actually using some of these tools to really "get it." I never understood them either, until I actually messed around with them. I am currently on my project solo, so I don't really stack at the moment, I think it really helps more the larger of a team you're working with is.