No it wasn't. As sc68cal says, its a patchbomb. And if you think otherwise, let me know how I can revert his changes to remove short tags and the mysql* changes using a single git command (hint, there isn't).
I'm all for changes to an open source project - whether it acts like one or not - but every open source developer should, at some point, learn that gigantic patchsets with lots of unrelated changes are a big no-no.
I'm just pissed that he didn't even bother to actually fork the project. On Github! WOW! All the previous commits before the fork? Gone. Poof. It's completely without any context. Even though there's a big "FORK" button!
I work on it. I currently update the git repo with the svn sources. This is somewhat slow... May I ask what you want to do with the dissected patches? Try to build a "clean" version as pbiggar has said?
This doesn't concern me as much, so long as he has a note saying "compiled onto commit hash blah". Cherry-picking would be a pain, but doable at that point.
I'm all for changes to an open source project - whether it acts like one or not - but every open source developer should, at some point, learn that gigantic patchsets with lots of unrelated changes are a big no-no.