Contributions on GitHub getting stuck

[Kevin Rushforth]

I agree there is room for improvement in guiding contributors, perhaps 
with a comment that includes a helpful message as you suggest, along 
with a pointer to the contributing guidelines.

However, I like the current policy where email doesn't get sent until a 
PR has met some reasonable threshold of readiness, so I would not be in 
favor of sending email to the development lists until it is rfr. For 
those component areas where someone wants to see it, and jump in and be 
helpful, they can.

-- Kevin


On 10/21/2021 4:19 PM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
> I just noticed that there are many PRs on openjdk/jdk that has gotten 
> stuck in a Catch 22, due to how our rules and Skara tools work together.
>
> This list, which currently has 24 PRs on it, lists open PRs that 
> neither have a "oca" nor a "rfr" label:
>
> https://github.com/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+draft%3Afalse+repo%3Aopenjdk%2Fjdk+-label%3Arfr+-label%3Aoca+ 
>
>
> It seems that this happens when someone creates a PR, gets told to 
> sign the OCA, does so, but then still not is a OpenJDK author (of 
> course!) and so cannot create a JBS issue. And without a JBS issue 
> number, Skara does not move the PR to the RFR state. And without that, 
> no mail is sent out. And at least for the PRs in the build category, I 
> was completely oblivious to their existence.
>
> Even though we write stuff like "Please talk on the relevant mailing 
> lists first" in the User Guide, people assume (rightfully so, I 
> believe) that submitting PRs is an acceptable way to contribute. And 
> when told by the bots to go sign the OCA and then being told "Nice, 
> you're good to go now!", and still nothing happens, this creates bad 
> optics.
>
> At the very least I think Skara should add some message in these cases 
> saying explicitly "You need a JBS issue too get this PR reviewed. 
> Please ask on the relevant mailing list for sponsorship". And maybe we 
> should rethink if we perhaps should not send a mail in any case, at 
> least notifying folks that there is an incoming PR that might need 
> guidance.
>
> /Magnus