PSA: the best way to encourage maintainers NOT to deal with an open issue or PR is to ask "any updates?" GitHub is the source of truth. All updates are there before your question. If it's important to you: create a better reproduction, share new use cases, contribute test cases, review tradeoffs - ThreadSky

patak.dev • 39 days ago

PSA: the best way to encourage maintainers NOT to deal with an open issue or PR is to ask "any updates?"

GitHub is the source of truth. All updates are there before your question. If it's important to you: create a better reproduction, share new use cases, contribute test cases, review tradeoffs

Comments

codewithtyler.com•38 days ago

Dude I had one repo in mind reading this 🤣 you know which one. So many comments saying "any updates?". Well no this issue wouldn't be open if there was updates.

patak.dev•38 days ago

I have "any updates?" nightmares

codewithtyler.com•38 days ago

Same! I look at an issue I'm just like

pavelhoral.bsky.social•39 days ago

Then there are PRs that are in semi approved state with no activity from the maintainer. There is no other way to bump into someone's notifications besides "Any update?" comment.

patak.dev•39 days ago

There is. Sending "Any updates?" may backfire. If it is already approved, you can share why this is important. What is being blocked that hasn't been discussed for example. If not, just leave an emoji reaction and wait. You can use pnpm patch if you want the change before it is released

vlascik.bsky.social•38 days ago

plenty of maintainers that won't fix breaking bugs because of simple laziness.

even with PRs ready. even after people beg them to do it, for years on end, wasting work of all the others that came before them completely.

bad OSS etiquette goes both ways.

do not make people write these comments.

patak.dev•38 days ago

fork and maintain the project yourself

andrea.red•34 days ago

Sometimes a random Discord server becomes the source of truth, and I hate it.

We should bring back old school forums!

patak.dev•34 days ago

ya, it is hard sometimes, but very important to summarize any important discussion happening out of GitHub in the issues and PRs

wojtekmaj.pl•38 days ago

Hot take: anyone writing "any updates?" is well aware of the above, and actually just means "hurry up bitch" but tries to hide it.

patak.dev•38 days ago

I think maybe a big chunk of them. But there are folks out there that have zero open source education. We need schools and companies to step up on that

techniq.dev•39 days ago

bumblebeesquare.bsky.social•39 days ago

I would say it depends on the time the issue stays stale. if it is > 1 month, posting "any update" is ok imo.

and github is not source of truth because a lot of maintainer will work locally or in a private repo before pushing to the public repo

rschristian.dev•39 days ago

If a maintainer is working on the issue by some less-than-public means, what would an update achieve there? They're not ready to show anything. "I spent 10 minutes noodling on it but have nothing concrete to show yet"?

patak.dev•39 days ago

I don't know a single maintainer that would appreciate an "any update". Just don't. No matter how long the issue has been stale.

michaelhays.bsky.social•39 days ago

"Any update?" is always bad.

I do think there are instances where a long-standing popular issue could use a prompting for context on what may be delaying progress, especially if it's a very impactful issue and it's unclear what the next steps are.

keeslinp.bsky.social•38 days ago

GitHub isn't always the source of truth though. If this is some sdk we pay for that isn't truly open source I think it's reasonable to ask for an update on the issue if it seems stale. Sometimes actionable insight comes out of it.

patak.dev•38 days ago

I'm talking about Open Source maintainers. I would still don't send "Any updates?" in the case you describe though. Share information about your use case and why this is important instead.

keeslinp.bsky.social•38 days ago

If you had a paid contract with a company and you opened an issue and they said they'd look into it and you never heard back you wouldn't ask for an update?

patak.dev•38 days ago

Again, I was talking about Open Source projects. But yes, even if I have a paid a contract I will not choose to send "Any updates?", and instead try to provide some information that would help my case on why this particular issue is important to me and others.

keeslinp.bsky.social•38 days ago

For sure, I was trying to understand the second part of your message sorry if that was unclear. Yeah sending just the text "any updates?" Is not helpful. It sounds like you're not opposed to the idea of seeking clarification and status updates in general just the low effort flybys?

patak.dev•38 days ago

For Open Source projects, only send a new message if you have new information to share yourself. If not, a emoji reaction is enough. If you are unsure, projects welcome discussions about issues and PRs in the community chats where they don't generate notifications for everyone.

patak.dev•39 days ago

Also important. There are a lot of reasons why a project may choose to wait before merging a PR. If the "any updates?" is triggered by a "why aren't you merging it?". Instead of spamming the maintainers, go ahead and use the PR in your app with https://pnpm.io/cli/patch. Nobody is blocking you.

rschristian.dev•39 days ago

I've been pushing patches more and more over the years.

Relying on (usually unpaid) OSS means this is *your code*; if you need other behaviors (esp. on a short timeline), take control & patch. Even the most thorough & least demanding issue might take time depending on maintainers' schedules.

patak.dev•39 days ago

that's the way

voxpelli.com•34 days ago

There are definitely cases where a status update is missing and would be helpful though

And with the rise of stale bots issues and PR:s got punished if they were inactive, so contributors were taught to ensure that they add activity to their issues and PR:s or else risk them getting closed

patak.dev•34 days ago

I don't like stale bots. And if this is true, it is yet another reason against them. I don't think this is the case for the "any updates?" I see in the projects I participate in though.

voxpelli.com•34 days ago

Could be true, but ultimately differs from case to case.

Lots of people don’t dare to contribute out of fear of doing wrong.

I think a message like yours affect those people more than it affects those who already feels entitled to ask.

silvenon.com•34 days ago

I don’t think “any updates?” are a way to fight staleness, people would be upfront about what they’re doing.

As for the fear of doing something wrong, contributions are a wide spectrum 🌈 it doesn’t have to be a PR, as described in the first post. There are so many ways to help!

silvenon.com•34 days ago

But to me “any updates?” feels dishonest, the person acts as if behind-the-scenes updates are likely enough to be worth notifying all participants.

I don’t think they really believe that, I think that’s just a roundabout way of asking “could you guys continue working on this?”

voxpelli.com•34 days ago

Is it that wording specifically that’s bad and it’s okay if people write something more specific? Like:

“What is blocking this from progressing?”

“Can I do something else to push this forward?”

voxpelli.com•34 days ago

And it kind of also regresses it all into a battle of entitlements:

The PR author’s perceived entitlement to get an update vs the maintainer’s perceived entitlement of not getting asked for an update.

I would much rather focus on collaboration than battling over entitlements 😕

patak.dev•34 days ago

What part of my original post is about entitlement? I'm trying to explain to folks that want to collaborate what is the best way to collaborate with an OSS project. A lot of people sending "Any updates?" are doing it because we lack OSS education in schools and companies.

patak.dev•34 days ago

Check my original post, I'm not saying "stop! go away!", I'm saying: "this is not helping you (or anyone), here are some ways to collaborate if you are interested"

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