developers_guide/git.rst: add a 'Pull Requests merge criteria' section

Captures qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals#304
and other existing procedures

Co-authored-by: Nyall Dawson <[email protected]>

docs/developers_guide/git.rst

@@ -263,6 +263,13 @@ If you make a pull request we ask that you please merge master to your PR
 branch regularly so that your PR is always mergeable to the upstream master
 branch.
 
+Pull requests will cause various checks of the Continuous Integration (CI) system
+to run: building for different environments and running tests, running code
+linters, spell checkers, etc. Make sure to look at the results of those ckecks
+and try to address issues they raise. Of course, you can ask a question in the
+pull request if you need help from other developers to understand and/or resolve
+an issue.
+
 If you are a developer and wish to evaluate the pull request queue, there is a
 very nice `tool that lets you do this from the command line
 <https://changelog.com/posts/git-pulls-command-line-tool-for-github-pull-requests>`_
@@ -285,7 +292,6 @@ deserves your options to accelerate it should be (in order of priority):
 * Send a message to the project steering committee asking them to help see your
   PR incorporated into the code base.
 
-
 Best practice for creating a pull request
 -----------------------------------------
 
@@ -332,6 +338,31 @@ submit patches which are unencumbered by conflicting intellectual property
 rights. Also do not submit code that you are not happy to have made available
 under the GPL.
 
+Pull Requests merge criteria
+============================
+
+Pull requests must be approved by at least one Core Developer (a developer with
+push rights to the qgis/QGIS GitHub repository). Before merging, the Core Developer
+must ensure that the PR passes all reasonable CI checks. Some exceptions exist
+to this rule, e.g. when a check is broken for unrelated reasons (such as broken
+third party services, or a lint/code analysis/spell check test failing from other
+parts of a modified file).
+
+Pull requests created by a Core Developper must also be approved by at least
+another Core Developer.
+
+A PR must remain open for at least 24 hours following submission, even if it has
+already been approved. This is to allow wider feedback to be gathered prior to
+merge, and to permit pre-merge feedback from developers in other time zones.
+Exceptions to this policy are:
+
+- Approved pull requests for backports to stable branches
+- "Emergency" pull requests, eg those which fix broken master builds, CI
+  infrastructure or which represent a time-sensitive security risk
+- Trivial fixes. The definition of "trivial" is left open to common sense and
+  developer discretion, but is expected to include non-risky changes like typo
+  fixes, translation string fixes, tab order changes, or similar.
+
 
 Obtaining GIT Write Access
 ===========================