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@laeubi laeubi commented Jan 12, 2026

Clarifies expectations for draft pull requests including:

  • What draft status means (seeking feedback, work in progress)
  • What it does NOT mean (not a shield from comments)
  • Requirements even for drafts (clear intent, understandable changes)
  • When to convert to regular PR

There where recently some examples for this e.g.

And it feels it would be good to have a reference for the future with clear guidance.

Clarifies expectations for draft pull requests including:
- What draft status means (seeking feedback, work in progress)
- What it does NOT mean (not a shield from comments)
- Requirements even for drafts (clear intent, understandable changes)
- When to convert to regular PR

Co-authored-by: laeubi <1331477+laeubi@users.noreply.github.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: copilot-swe-agent[bot] <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: laeubi <1331477+laeubi@users.noreply.github.com>
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@merks merks left a comment

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I totally agree with the premise being outlined. When a PR is created it should be comprehensible what the purpose is, not a private working area.


### Using Draft Pull Requests

GitHub allows you to mark a pull request as a [draft](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/about-pull-requests#draft-pull-requests) to indicate that it is not yet ready for final review or merging. Draft PRs are a valuable tool for collaboration, but they come with certain expectations in the Eclipse Platform community.
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Please start new sentence on new lines. Applies to all things below as well. For a bullets use

- This is is a bullet.
  This the second sentence in the same bullet.


- **Clear intent and description**: Explain what you are trying to achieve, why the changes are being made, and what the current state is.
- **Understandable changes**: Others should be able to understand what you have done so far and what remains to be done. Consider using a task list in the description to track progress.
- **Specific questions or requests**: If you need help or feedback on particular aspects, clearly state what you need (_e.g._, "I'm unsure about the approach in XYZ.java" or "Tests for feature X are still missing").
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No need for italics e.g.

@vogella
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vogella commented Jan 12, 2026

Looks AI generated, way to long for this purpose. Also weird to have such longisch rules for draft PR and not for regular PR.

Maybe just add a sentence like: "Draft PR indicate that they are WIP or not yet ready to merged but should follow the same quality rules as regular PR and it is OK to give feedback to them."

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Looks AI generated, way to long for this purpose. Also weird to have such longisch rules for draft PR and not for regular PR.

Maybe just add a sentence like: "Draft PR indicate that they are WIP or not yet ready to merged but should follow the same quality rules as regular PR and it is OK to give feedback to them."

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Thank you for this proposal. As we discussed offline already, from my point of view this should kind of reflect the expectations for every draft PR (no matter in which repo), but given that we repeatedly had the situation that PRs did not follow these expectations, it's good to have them documented. This is done in an clear and comprehensible way. I only have one comment for a potential improvement.


#### What Draft Status Means

A draft PR indicates that:
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It might be helpful to add a sentence that the PR creator should add information in the PR description on what kind of feedback is desired on that specific PR in the current state. Otherwise this description could lead to the assumption that one can expect early feedback for a draft PR, but usually most people will probably ignore draft PRs until they are marked as ready for review.

@laeubi
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laeubi commented Jan 12, 2026

see comment

Please add concrete suggestions on changes you want "something like" is not really actionable.

If someone things other sections are not detailed enough they can be improved in separate PRs.

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vogella commented Jan 12, 2026

see comment

Please add concrete suggestions on changes you want "something like" is not really actionable.

If someone things other sections are not detailed enough they can be improved in separate PRs.

Feedback was:

Looks AI generated, way to long for this purpose. Also weird to have such longisch rules for draft PR and not for regular PR.

Maybe just add a sentence like: "Draft PR indicate that they are WIP or not yet ready to merged but should follow the same quality rules as regular PR and it is OK to give feedback to them."

@vogella vogella closed this Jan 12, 2026
@vogella vogella reopened this Jan 12, 2026
@laeubi
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laeubi commented Jan 12, 2026

Feedback was

Maybe it was not clear enough, but please add code suggestions (like @merks and @HeikoKlare ) to suggest concrete changes on the text that can be addressed e.g.

  • "Looks AI generated" is nothing that can be acted upon (and yes it was done that way as the AI is much better at the grammar and style than me)
  • "way to long for this purpose" is maybe debatable in general I think it should be obvious but it actually seems not to be the case if we take the recent examples and I rather like to have a consistent and detailed instruction in one place I can link to instead of reiteration the same points over and over again on many places.

Still if you have concrete proposals to shorten things without making it a generic short sentence that is open to interpretation and don't help people.

A shorter form would be:

#### Draft PRs

**What it means**
- Not ready to merge / shows work in progress
- Shared to get early feedback or help or build verification.

**What it does not mean**
- A request to avoid feedback.
- A replacement for private branches or local work.

**Requirements**
- Clear goal and current state in the description.
- Changes are understandable and reviewable.
- Reasonably coherent scope.

Convert to a regular PR once it is ready for full review.

@HannesWell
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Personally I'm fine with it either way, being it just a short paragraph or a verbose section explaining the details.
Content-wise I fully agree with it. So for me the most important part is to make it clear.

Also weird to have such longisch rules for draft PR and not for regular PR.

If your think that's important the section could also be about PRs in general and have smaller sub-section about drafts and what is different about them and what's not?

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5 participants