There are more open PRs waiting for a review. Is posting here a good way to actively request a review from core developers when a PR has not been picked up (like this one) for some time?
For reference: recently there have already been some discussions on topics related to this:
Some numbers: there are currently 475 open PRs with label “awaiting core review”. To get a feeling what is the status of these PRs I selected the 50 oldest PRs and went through them.
17 PRs: The label “awaiting core review” can be removed
3 PRs: Not sure
30 PRs: The PR looks valid (e.g. tests pass, approved) and requires a review from a core developer (some PRs have conflicts with the main branch, so perhaps a request to rebase is sufficient)
If the person asking is the PR author, it’s acceptable because the volume of such requests is low. But the issue can also simply be no one feel empowered or has the bandwidth. For simple, uncontroversial PRs that’s not a concern. We also don’t want folks asking on someone else’s behalf as we want engagement with the PR author.
Wait and let it happen before we decide we have any need to do something.
I jumped on this one primarily because I had time and I was curious if I even had a setup capable of running turtle and tkinter stuff. Turns out I do, so it looked reasonable and I decided to go with the trust the PR author approach after visual verification. I have no particular expertise around tkinter and turtle, it’s all about available time for an interrupt (assume any of these consumes 1-2 hours) no matter what the issue and PR topic are. I wouldn’t likely have looked at this issue or PR at all had it just been sitting on its own in the issue tracker.
As the others have said, we would not appreciate this forum being used to chase core devs to work harder.
However, the kind of analysis you did on those 50 PRs is very helpful, and I encourage you to continue helping us triage the backlog in this way. The best way to get attention from the relevant core dev is to mention them on the PR and ask them to take a look (this is most effective in cases where the relevant core dev was not already aware of the PR, or after you have added a substantial review of your own which can help them. Simply reminding us that there are open PRs is not that helpful - we are aware).
You could also comment on PRs with suggestions for the authors, including things such as to resolve merge conflicts, or anything else that you think can help make their PR more likely to progress. Or, when the PR is out of date, you could suggest on the PR that it be closed, and maybe the author will do that rather than a core dev.
You raise the point that the “awaiting review”/“awaiting core review” do not belong on draft PRs. This is a good point, but rather than us removing the label I think this should be raised as a workflow issue - could the bot add/remove the labels as PRs transition between draft and non-draft status? Would you be willing to create an issue on the core-workflow bug tracker at GitHub - python/core-workflow: Issue tracker for CPython's workflow?
I’m reviewing your list and taking some quick actions on a few PRs. Thanks again.
