This is a reconsideration of the fix to bug 879634. Different package maintainer has different preference to manage patches within a dist-git repo, just as mentioned in previous bug, and a comment given by @rdieter, quoted below, during the testing of fedpkg-1.24 in Bodhi.

annoying new behavior, 'fedpkg push' fails (without --force) if not all patches are checked into git. I sometimes purposely check (large) patches into lookaside cache. I think a simple warning (and not a fatal error) by default would be sufficient here.

Another issue is that, current fixup to bug 879634 blocks fedpkg-retire. Because, retire deletes all files including SPEC, then git-push will not get chance to run.

fedpkg should be trying test to be more friendly to package maintainer. As rdieter suggests, giving a warning would be sufficient.