[PATCH] SubmittingPatches: abandoning a series

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

The document describes an idealized life cycle for a patch series,
where an author scratches their itch, improves the patch(es) with
help from fellow reviewers, and iterate until their work becomes a
part of Git.

But sometimes a topic may have to be abandoned or retracted, with an
option to later resurrect it when they can, and it is much better
than leaving a topic in limbo.  Clearly state that we encourage
contributors to explicitly retract their topic that did not succeed.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
---
 Documentation/SubmittingPatches | 15 +++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)

diff --git c/Documentation/SubmittingPatches w/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
index f042bb5aaf..f14ae20aaa 100644
--- c/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
+++ w/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
@@ -95,6 +95,21 @@ input and avoids unnecessary churn from many rapid iterations.
   top, it gets merged to the 'master' branch and waits to become part
   of the next major release.
 
+But sometimes things do not work as planned.
+
+. A discussion on the list might convince you that your changes are
+  not such a good idea, in which case you are expected to explicitly
+  retract the topic, to releave the maintainer from having to worry
+  about it.
+
+. You may have to stop pursuing the topic due to various reasons like
+  lack of time, other commitments, shifting priorities, etc.  It is a
+  friendly thing to do to tell the list in such a case, so that others
+  interested in the topic can take over the topic and continue.  When
+  there is no taker, the maintainer may have to discard the topic, but
+  anybody can resurrect the topic later when they (including you) can
+  spend more time on it.
+
 In the following sections, many techniques and conventions are listed
 to help your patches get reviewed effectively in such a life cycle.