I don't know a lot about the programming aspects - but I have to agree with Chris on this.  The idea of 450 patches going in without testing seems like a bit of a nightmare waiting to happen.  It would mean finding bugs (which I'm famous for) and not being able to track down what caused it as easily.  I'd feel more comfortable as a tester/doc manager/user if I knew thing were being tested in smaller chunks along the way.