Re: How does Git's maintenance policy handle topics that don't start from "master?"

"Steven E. Harris" <seh@panix.com> writes:

After posting I discovered the "SubmittingPatches" document¹, which does address part of my inquiry:

,----[ Decide what to base your work on ]
| - A new feature should be based on 'master' in general. If the new
|    feature depends on a topic that is in 'pu', but not in 'master',
|    base your work on the tip of that topic.
| 
| - Corrections and enhancements to a topic not yet in 'master' should
|    be based on the tip of that topic. If the topic has not been merged
|    to 'next', it's alright to add a note to squash minor corrections
|    into the series.
| 
| - In the exceptional case that a new feature depends on several topics
|    not in 'master', start working on 'next' or 'pu' privately and send
|    out patches for discussion. Before the final merge, you may have to
|    wait until some of the dependent topics graduate to 'master', and
|    rebase your work.
`----

The last one in particular implies that the topic branch will not be fit for serious consideration until its dependencies have themselves graduated to "master."

Footnotes: 
¹ https://raw.github.com/git/git/master/Documentation/SubmittingPatches