The case where I need stacked PRs is when I have a ton of changes and I want to upstream them. I have so many changes that I have probably written code in this order:
1. feature1 work
2. feature2 work
3. architecture rework
4. docs
5. feature3 work
6. optimization
7. docs
8. feature4 work
9. security fixes
10. optimization
11. docs
12. last pass security fixes
By the time I want to upstream, I probably want to reorder my commits and generate on PR per theme (arch, feature1 + docs + optimization, feature2+docs + optimization, etc) before I submit a bunch of PRs.
GitHub stacked PRs solve none of my problems. Stacked PRs doesn't take care of the reordering of commits, it doesn't take care of rebasing changes, it adds very little on top of what I was already able to do by saying "this is PR 1 out of 7, this is PR2 out of 7 and build on top of the branch that I used for PR1/7, etc".
> it adds very little on top of what I was already able to do by saying "this is PR 1 out of 7, this is PR2 out of 7 and build on top of the branch that I used for PR1/7, etc".
That's literally all it's supposed to do. Make that dev flow less awful so you don't have to say "by the way this PR depends on #123, I will change the target branch when that is merged" and nonsense like that.
Well, then it provides so little they could have not done anything at all as well. Useful stacked PRs would be something that uses AI to split my large branch/PR into smaller PRs for upstream to review. Claude does that for me.
They've provided a skill with their stacking CLI to provide guidance to any coding agent and the Copilot harness now ships with a pr-stack command to do exactly what you're saying for PR splitting FYI: https://twitter.com/_JeremyMoseley/status/208219039710799469...
It's not "so little". I've wanted this for ages. Trying to submit a chain of PRs is a horrible experience without support for it. This is nothing to do with AI.
The case where I need stacked PRs is when I have a ton of changes and I want to upstream them. I have so many changes that I have probably written code in this order: 1. feature1 work 2. feature2 work 3. architecture rework 4. docs 5. feature3 work 6. optimization 7. docs 8. feature4 work 9. security fixes 10. optimization 11. docs 12. last pass security fixes
By the time I want to upstream, I probably want to reorder my commits and generate on PR per theme (arch, feature1 + docs + optimization, feature2+docs + optimization, etc) before I submit a bunch of PRs.
GitHub stacked PRs solve none of my problems. Stacked PRs doesn't take care of the reordering of commits, it doesn't take care of rebasing changes, it adds very little on top of what I was already able to do by saying "this is PR 1 out of 7, this is PR2 out of 7 and build on top of the branch that I used for PR1/7, etc".
Hugely disappointing, bordering useless.