Before Gerrit 2.15 drafts of reviews were allowed to be checked in. There are many reasons to want to do this, including:
- implementing only part of a change, but want to push your change to the server to run tests before requesting reviewer feedback
- getting some of your team to review the change before the formal review starts
- seeing what the change looks like before the formal review starts
- backing up your code to work on something else without creating a branch
https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2.15.html#new-workflows documents that draft changes are replaced by 2 distinct features:
- Work-in-Progress changes
- Work-in-Progress (WIP) changes are visible to anyone but do not notify or require action from a reviewer.
- Set WIP: git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master%wip
- Remove WIP: git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master%ready
- Private changes
- Private changes are changes that are only visible to their owners, reviewers, and users with the View Private Changes global capability.
- Set private: git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master%private
- Remove private: git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master%remove-private
e.g. trying #2 you will get the URL as normal and it then shows private once accessed:
A change can be both private and WIP, they’re separate statuses.