[python-committers] Should I merge a PR that I approved if it was written by a different core developer?

[Victor Stinner]

Hi,

Before the GitHub era, in the old "Mercurial era", the unwritten rule
was to not merge a patch written by a developer who has the commit
bit, to not "steal" his/her work. The old workflow (patches attached
to the bug tracker) didn't allow to easily keep the author. You had to
find the author email and full name and specify it manually.

Moreover, there was a written rule of using the name of the developer
who actually pushed the commit, so the commiters took the
responsability of any regression (reminder the old era with no
pre-commit CI? ;-)).

In the new Git era, the author and committer *can* be two different
people. Examples with "git log --pretty=full":

commit 9abee722d448c1c00c7d4e11ce242ec7b13e5c49
Author: Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>
Commit: GitHub <noreply at github.com>

commit 8f51bb436f8adfd139cad046b91cd462c7f27f6c (tag: v3.7.0a1)
Author: Ned Deily <nad at python.org>
Commit: Ned Deily <nad at python.org>

commit 9b47af65375fab9318e88ccb061394a36c8c6c33
Author: svelankar <17737361+svelankar at users.noreply.github.com>
Commit: Raymond Hettinger <rhettinger at users.noreply.github.com>

My question is: is someone opposed that a core developer clicks on the
[Merge] button for a PR proposed by a different core developer?

IMHO having a committer different than the author is valuable since
the responsability is now shared by two developers instead of single
one. It's similar to the "Signed-Off" tags used by the Linux kernel,
but the list is limited to a single Signed-Off :-) Well, the committer
is usually seen as the most reponsible, but now we can complain to the
author as well *if needed* :-D

Victor