[Pandas-dev] Proposal to change PR update policy from rebase to merge

[Joris Van den Bossche]

Hi all,

Currently when PRs get outdated, we often ask to "rebase and update"
(although to be honest, it mainly Jeff that is doing most of this work to
ping stale PRs), and rebasing is also how it is explained in the docs (
http://pandas-docs.github.io/pandas-docs-travis/contributing.html#creating-a-branch).

And also many active contributors use rebasing while working on a PR to get
in sync with changes in master.

I would like to propose to change this policy from rebasing to merging (=
merging master in the feature branch, creating a merge commit).

Some reasons for this:

- I personally think this is easier to do (certainly for less experienced
git users; conflicts can be easier to solve, ..)
- It makes it easier to follow what has changed (certainly if we extend
'not rebasing' with 'not squash rebasing'), making it easier review
- It doesn't destroy links to github PR comments
- Since we squash on merge in the end, we don't care about the additional
merge commits in the PR's history

Thoughts on this?

If we would agree on this, that would mean: update the docs + start doing
it ourselves + start asking that of contributors consistently.

Regards,
Joris
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