Commenting and approving pull requests

> I almost always leave a comment on each PR I review, even just observations: “This class is getting big, we might want to consider adding a presenter,” or praise: “Thanks for cleaning this up!”

Things like that I'd much rather leave as comments in the code, rather than dangling as off-hand things in some unrelated PR. Probably no one will see those PR comments unless they go splunking for some reason, but having them right in the code is much more evident to all the people passing through, or even reminding yourself in the future too.

In general I feel like PR reviews are basically reviews happening too late, and if there is a lot of stuff to review and agree upon in the PR, you'll be better off trying to reduce that up front by discussing and noting design decisions before the work even starts. If there is so many unknowns first, do one step to figure out how it can be done, then agree on that, again before starting the actual work.

That leads to PRs basically just being spot-checking, not deep analysis nor even space for nitpicks. If you as a reviewer spots things after the implementation rather in the discussion beforehand, that ends up being on both of you, instead of just the implementer who tried to move along to finish the thing.

This one resonates, because it's largely how I comment on PRs too!

One thing not mentioned is how important it is to acknowledge the comments too. People are taking their time to review your PR, and not even giving a reaction will make the commenter question whether or not it was even received. I'm not looking to throw my thoughts out into the aether. That's what microblogging platforms are for!

I can't tell you how many times I got no response/acknowledgement on a comment that actually surfaced something critical. I haven't been keeping track, but I think my comments could have prevented dozens of outages at this point. It's quite exhausting. In my own experience, the worst offenders of this are senior devs.

> Why approve, if I’ve left comments that I think are worth implementing? > > Because I trust my team. I know that my comments will be considered, and if they’re useful, implemented.

I do this a lot too. It's critical that PR authors don't burn that trust either. If they make substantial changes that warrant another review, I hope they do request it. Too many times in my career have colleagues just went ahead and made bad changes after my approval that I would have easily caught, merge, and things go

High trust, high alignment environments move so fast, and you know when you're in one and know when you have your colleagues' trust. It feels really good!

While one of the best things about PRs can be raising the floor on quality, I think the another powerful factor is forcing an opportunity to talk about the code. This article even pre-empts this confusion by acknowledging that commenting on a PR while approving it is "weird". This implies that many people don't understand the indirect benefits of the PR and think the process is all about approval and raising the quality floor.

I think raising the floor, gives diminishing returns once someone is used to the team and the code base, but the conversation always remains relevant. Sometimes teams that resist things like PRs (e.g. "they just slow us down") are actually teams that are having those conversions elsewhere (in-person, on slack, during standup or sprint planning, etc).

We do this too. In my team, my rule is: if it’s better than what’s on master, you approve and merge.

There’s no use making the customer wait for your questions, code style suggestions etc to be addressed.

Even if you request changes, you leave all your comments and make explicit which are the blocking ones and which can be addressed in the future.

I do the same as the author, and for my comments I make it clear what is non-blocking/blocking with Conventional Comments: https://conventionalcomments.org

To make it easier for myself to leave the CC tags ("nit(non-blocking): ", etc), I use the macOS text expander in System Settings and created mnemonics to easily insert them.

Example: If I type "+pnn", that maps to:

+p = pull request comment n = nit n = non-blocking

Example 2: If I type "+pc", that maps to:

+p = pull request comment c = chore

(and it's blocking because I didn't type "+pcn", the non-blocking version).

> Additionally, some repos can be configured to automatically merge PRs when all requirements are met, one of which might be your approval.

If anyone at GitHub is reading this, I’d love a fourth checkbox in the “leave a review” modal that is “Approve but disable auto merge” (alongside Comment/Approve/Request changes)! Even just surfacing “this PR has auto merge enabled” near the Approve button would be great.

With a robust enough test suite and a team that does TDD and mob programming, code reviews are pretty much obsolete and a waste of time. Everyone's already involved in the coding process as a mob and the tests catch any regressions.

I'm a big believer in this workflow and generally agree with all the guidelines about when to do and not do this.

Code review has value, but I don't think we are always honest about the costs. At most places I've worked, there has been an informal understanding that code should be reviewed within 24 hours or so, but there is a world of difference between getting a review within 2 hours and 23 hours.

If you have to go back and forth a second time, it's so much more likely that the approval comes much later due to straddling end-of-day in someone's timezone.

Tangentially, if you are designing policies for code review at your org, try to think both about minimum requirements (e.g. PRs should get a first look within 24 hours) and typical requirements (e.g. most PRs should get reviewed within 2-3 hours). What typically happens is what determines overall velocity for your org, so it's much more important than whatever strict SLA policy you have. These are also fixable problems if you have targeted conversations with people. E.g. "I noticed X, Y, Z times, you had unreviewed PRs at the end of the day. Can you set aside some time to review code before EOD? Or try installing PR reminder?"

This is me, I think it comes from a personality of wanting to make sure I say something but generally trusting that the author has more context than I do. I float questions and nits but generally will approve if I don't see anything glaring. If I spot anything where I think "we should definitely go another direction here" I ask for changes instead of approving and make them super clear.

I do the same!

But PR discussions about lintable style issues always surprise me. The ideal solution is to add a rule in the linter. But when the team won't agree on the rule, and is open to multiple styles, the author should decide, simple! Had a team mate recently who'd block PRs over T[] vs Array<T>, forcing people to stick with Array<T> for simple types like number[] even though TypeScript's own docs and tooling push T[].

Does anyone not do this? It would be miserable working at a place where nits were blockers and required re-review.

Totally agree, and I go even farther: I consider that the PR author is totally responsible of merging their PR or not, and so no comment is blocking. I can make a comment I consider blocking, but there might be very good reasons that I can't see to still merge the PR. Fixes can come in a follow-up PR. As long as everyone takes responsibility for their work, it is a well-working system.

I see where the author is coming from, but still this feels like a reinvention of commit trailers ("Acked-by", "Reviewed-by",...) especially for these non-blocking and "only appraising" comments. Commit trailers even have the benefit that they are recorded in the comment, making them discoverable and even allowing statistics, while "human language" comments are not that easy to do statistics on (modulo AI I guess, but that's another topic).

I like doing this as well.

The 'auto merge on approval flag' PR authors can flip on GitHub breaks this flow though, as it will just merge as soon as you hit approve.

[dead]

I woke up one day and the industry is gating all code changes behind PRs w/ approvals. Anyone still able to commit to main without approval from someone else? I’m even seeing companies require multiple approvals on every PR. It’s insanity.

I’m skeptical. Software is as buggy as it ever was. I come across teams shipping terrible quality software, where every line change was approved and reviewed. I come across teams that require every change have an approval, but don’t require 100% test coverage. I’m seeing senior engineers have to get approval from juniors for a copy change.

It’s theatre. It’s bad management. It’s a cargo cult. It isn’t actually driving code quality.

Code review is one thing. Code review is good. But requiring every change have an approval is something else.

Just want to comment here. I hate reviewer leave a bunch of nits and stamp the PR. This is ambiguous, are these nits asks or just you opinions? What if I dont address all of them. Also folks need to take rejection lightly - your reviewer wants you to address something, thats really it.

Azure-dev ops explicitly has an "Approve with suggestions", I suspect it was designed for when there are multiple acceptances required, but I sometimes use it anyway.

Whether those comments get read once approved, I don't know.

This is more than half of my code reviews (when functionally correct). It works pretty well, when you can trust that the person doing the changes won't accidentally (or otherwise) slip in behavioral changes. Like half just got merged as-is and half of those got a separate cleanup later.

Most people are fine, some routinely abuse it to do much larger changes that should normally imply full review - double check afterward! Your name is still on it, it is still your responsibility.

I started doing this a few years ago, it works a treat with non-junior engineers. With the right testing in place, review becomes more about communicating the ideas clearly rather than gatekeeping.

I do this too. I generally skim PRs just to make sure the person isn't doing anything too crazy. I trust my team to write good code. Pulling a branch and testing the code is usually a waste of time unless it's a critical bug or feature.

I approve of it.

I have now commented on it.