A good pull request is a beautiful thing to behold and will earn you kudos from your fellow engineers, QA and, maybe even, future you (them again).
So...what makes a good pull request, such that can earn you this level of adoration?
- It has a good branch name that references the ticket number and summarises the intent
- It has a good title that helps to set the scene and make your pull request discoverable amongst the many. It should be as brief a summary as makes sense to convey it’s intent as well as the JIRA ticket number.
- It more completely explains the intent in the description
- It has any pertinent information for the reviewer (such as how to enable the feature, reference documents, hacks, workarounds, etc)
- It is up to date with its target branch (we use the rebase and /force push flow). You should check and rebase regularly until it is merged.
- It has been tagged appropriate to it’s status - for example, tagging it with “Code review” helps it stand out as being ready to review (and potentially merge).