Possible downside to PQM or ChangeIntegrator?

[Nicholas Allen]

Hi,

After thinking a bit more about the change integrator and how it would 
work I can see a few problems with this approach. We would like to 
compile and run automated tests by the change integrator before pushing 
to the official trunk version. When it merges in a developer's branch 
this will happen at some undetermined time and all the changes made to 
the developer`s branch may not all be related and therefore should not 
be merged as one commit. I know bzr can distinguish between the sub 
revisions of the merge but it would be nice that all commits to the 
trunk had one single related purpose.

Using PQM developers would submit requests to merge their branch up to 
the head revision at the time the request is made. So even if PQM merges 
it 2 days later it will not include revisions that were made after this.

But this also brings up a possible problem with PQM. If it decides that 
it will not merge a request from a developer (eg does not compile) it 
then informs the developer but what if the developer has already made 
unrelated changes in his branch by this time? He can submit another 
merge request for his branch but now the unrelated changes will get 
merged with the original changes. The only other thing he could do is to 
make another branch at the revision that originally wanted to be merged, 
fix the problems reported by the ChangeIntegrator or PQM, and then 
submit a merge request for this new branch. But how would he also 
separate out the new changes he made in his original branch if he wanted 
to submit these first?

The only other solution is to require that each developer creates a 
separate branch all the time and all commits on a branch must be for a 
related reason. But there are often many small commits by a developer 
and this would be cumbersome.

So the question boils down to how do you fix changes reported by the PQM 
and then request a new merge but still continue to work in your branch 
while the request is being processed?

Can anyone shed any light on this after using PQM for a while?

Thanks,

Nicholas Allen