When a pull request is left open for a long time, it becomes stale and accumulates merge debt. The longer it remains open, the more changes occur on the main branch, increasing the work needed to update and merge the PR. This can lead to conflicts, bugs, and unhappy developers.
Video: Merge Debt | Matt Goldman & Luke Cook | Rules (16 min)Merge debt can be avoided by:
- Ensuring PRs don't stay open for too long - you could use SSW Dory to automatically inform you of any outstanding PRs
- Conducting daily reviews on repos to ensure all PRs that can be merged are merged
- Ensuring that once a PR is ready to be merged, an "over the shoulder" review occurs
- Following the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) - if a PR covers multiple tasks, it is harder to review and can create more problems
Internal contributors
If you are in a team (i.e. an internal contributor) it is the PR author's responsibility to get a PR reviewed and action feedback ASAP.
Tip: For internal contributors, it's a good idea to have a call with the PR reviewers.
Outside contributors
If you are not part of the team (i.e. an outside contributor), reviewing the PR is the responsibility of the Repo maintainers. Actioning the feedback is still the responsibility of the PR author.
Tip: For outside contributors, it's a good idea to chase the reviewers by reaching out with a comment on GitHub, or through the repo's community (e.g. Discord channels).
Note: Remember that before declaring a task 'Done' with a link, your changes should be live for verification.
