Are you assuming that they needed 400 commits over 3 months, to come to an increment that would build? They could have been pushing to main the whole time, regularly.

This was a tactical decision. They know that everyone waits for main, to start reviewing, because we assume things in dev branches are still too much of a construction site, to make it worthwhile to dig through someone else's code base.

The increment is also just way. too. big. Ain't nobody got time to read all a that. Straight to blind install.