Yesterday, GitHub launched a new feature named draft pull requests, which allows users to start a pull request before they are done implementing all the code changes.
Users can start a conversation with their collaborators once the code is ready. If a user ends up closing the pull request for some reason or is refactoring the code entirely, the pull request would work in collaboration. Also, if a user wants to signal a pull request to be the start of the conversation and the code isn’t ready, users can still let the people check it out locally and get feedback.
The draft pull requests feature can tag users if they are still working on a PR and notify the team once it’s ready. This feature will also help the pull requests that are prematurely closed, or for times when users start working on a new feature and forget to send a PR.
When a user opens a pull request, a drop-down arrow appears next to the ‘Create pull request’ button. Users can toggle the drop-down arrow for creating a draft.
A draft pull request is differently styled for indicating that it is in a draft state. Users can change the status to ‘Ready for review’ near the bottom of the pull request for removing the draft state and allow merging according to the project’s settings. In case a user has ‘CODEOWNERS file’ in their repository, a draft pull request will suppress notifications to those reviewers until it is marked as ready for review.
Users have given mixed reviews to this news. According to a few users, this new feature will save up a lot of time. One of the users said, “It saves a lot of wasted effort by exploring the problem domain collaboratively before development begins.”
While according to a few others this idea is not much effective. Another comment reads, “Someone suggested this on my team. I personally don’t like the idea because these policies often times lead to bureaucracy and then nothing getting released. It is not that I am against thinking ahead but if I have to in details explain everything I do, then more time is spent documenting than actually creating which is the part I enjoy.”
To know more about this news, check out GitHub official post.
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