Maintainer's checklist on accepting formula PR

docs/Homebrew-homebrew-core-Merge-Checklist.md

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# Homebrew/homebrew-core Merge Checklist
+
+The following checklist is intended to help maintainers decide on
+whether to merge, request changes or close a PR. It also brings more
+transparency for contributors in addition to
+[Acceptable Formulae](Acceptable-Formulae.md) requirements.
+
+This is a guiding principle. As a maintainer, you can make a call to either
+request changes from a contributor or help them out based on their comfort and
+previous contributions. Remember, as a team we
+[Prioritise Maintainers Over Users](Maintainers-Avoiding-Burnout.md) to avoid
+burnout.
+
+This is a more practical checklist; it should be used after you get familiar with
+[Maintainer Guidelines](Maintainer-Guidelines.md).
+
+## Checklist
+
+Check for:
+
+- previously opened active PRs, as we would like to be fair to contributors who came first
+- patches/`inreplace` that have been applied to upstream and can be removed
+- comments in formula around `url`, as we do skip some versions (for example [vim](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/359dbb190bb3776c4d6a1f603a271dd8f186f077/Formula/vim.rb#L4) or [v8](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/359dbb190bb3776c4d6a1f603a271dd8f186f077/Formula/v8.rb#L4))
+- vendored resources that need updates (for example [emscripten](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/57126ac765c3ac5201ce53bcdebf7a0e19071eba))
+- vendored dependencies (for example [certbot](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/42966/files))
+- stable/announced release
+  - some teams use odd minor release number for tests and even for stable releases
+  - other teams drop new version with minor release 0 but promote it to stable only after a few minor releases
+  - if the software uses only hosted version control (such as GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket), the release should be tagged and if upstream marks latest/pre-releases, PR must use latest
+- does changelog mention addition/removal of dependency and is it addressed in the PR
+  - does formula depend on versioned formula (for example `python@2`, `go@1.10`, `erlang@17`) that can be upgraded
+- commits
+  - contain one formula change per commit
+    - ask author to squash
+    - rebase during merge
+  - version update follows preferred message format for simple version updates: `foobar 7.3`
+  - other fixes format is `foobar: fix flibble matrix`
+  - you can use `--bump` flag for `brew pull` in case the PR have a single commit but the wrong message
+- bottle block is not removed
+
+  Suggested reply:
+  ```
+  Please keep bottle block in place, [@BrewTestBot](https://github.com/BrewTestBot) takes care of it.
+  ```
+- is there a test block for other than checking version or printing help? Consider asking to add one
+- if CI failed
+  - due to test block - paste relevant lines and add `test failure` label
+  - due to build errors - paste relevant lines and add `build failure` label
+  - due to other formulae needing revision bumps - suggest to use the following command:
+    ```
+    # in this example PR is for `libuv` formula and `urbit` needs revision bump
+    brew bump-revision --message 'for libuv' urbit
+    ```
+    - make sure it is one commit per revision bump
+- if CI is green and formula `bottle :unneeded` you can merge it through GitHub UI
+- if CI is green and bottles need to be pulled, use: `brew pull --bottle $PR_ID`
+- don't forget to thank the contributor
+  - celebrate the first-time contributors
+- suggest to use `brew bump-formula-pr` next time if this was not the case

docs/README.md

@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@
 - [Common Issues for Maintainers](Common-Issues-for-Core-Contributors.md)
 - [Releases](Releases.md)
 - [Developer/Internal API Documentation](https://rubydoc.brew.sh)
+- [Homebrew/homebrew-core merge checklist](Homebrew-homebrew-core-Merge-Checklist.md)
 
 ## Governance