The confusion in that EACL submission thread is understandable, but the answer is simpler than it looks: if the reviews are in your hands, the revisions belong in the PDF you commit now, not in some imagined later draft. Waiting for camera-ready to address minor reviewer comments is a gamble with your own acceptance odds, and it treats the commitment PDF as a formality when it is actually your best remaining lever.
We have seen this pattern before in the broader submission ecosystem, from questions about whether submission volume is down or just waiting on meta to the procedural frustration of navigating NeurIPS submission hurdles when the edit option goes missing. The throughline is that researchers treat the technical act of submitting as a box to check, not as a communication with the people who will decide the paper's fate. The person who asked whether to attach a PDF or just a link to reviews is not being lazy; they are responding to a system that has made the submission process opaque at every turn. But the system's opacity does not change what the reviewers will see.
Here is the practical truth: the reviewers who read your ARR paper are likely the same people who will see your EACL commitment. If you attach a PDF that ignores their minor suggestions, you are telling them you did not take their feedback seriously. That is a signal they can act on, even if they would never write it down. Addressing the comments now costs you a few hours of editing. Ignoring them costs you the goodwill that often separates a borderline accept from a reject. The camera-ready version, if you get there, is for the proceedings; the commitment PDF is for the people in the room.
The deeper issue is that submission systems keep asking for more without explaining why. The thread shows a researcher who thought a link to reviews would suffice, then discovered a PDF requirement with no guidance on what that PDF should contain. That is a failure of the platform, not the user. But you can navigate it by treating every artifact you upload as a chance to reduce friction for the reviewers. If the comments are minor, fix them. If they are substantial, fix what you can and note the rest. The goal is to make the reviewers feel heard, not to make the formatting perfect.
One specific detail to watch: the distinction between "commitment PDF" and "camera-ready" is not just bureaucratic. The commitment PDF is your final chance to shape reviewer perception before the decision. The camera-ready is a record of what was accepted. Do not confuse the two, because the cost of that confusion is a decision made against you that you could have influenced with one afternoon of revisions.