Jan Stolarek
I don't entirely agree. I personally find it very hard to review large patches as the amount of mental context generally seems to grow super-linearly in the amount of code touched. Moreover, I think it's important to remember that the need to read patches does not vanish the moment the patch is committed. To the contrary, review is merely the first of many instances in which a patch will be read. Other instances include,
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you say. I don't see it as contradicting in any way principles that I outlined. It's just that sometimes doing a single logical change to the code requires a large patch and breaking it artificially into smaller patches might actually make matters worse. I believe this would be the case for this scenario. And honestly speaking I don't think that the patch here will be very big. But like you say, there's a compromise to be struck.
Ahh, it looks like I was probably reading more into what you wrote than you intended; my apologies! Cheers, - Ben