What is a Pull Request, and How Do I Write Great Pull Requests?

If you send in a pull request, your goal is to get it merged. In this video I cover the basics of what a pull request is, share 8 tips for writing a great pull request, and show a few bad and good pull requests.

00:00 Introduction & What's a Pull Request?
01:59 1: Define a clear goal and stick to it
04:01 2: Write a clear, concise, descriptive title
05:03 3: Give me a TL;DR!
06:23 4: Give context and instructions
09:27 5: Link to existing issues/cards if possible
10:49 6: Use graphics, recordings, and GitHub styles if helpful
13:05 7: Write tests if possible
13:46 8: Review the PR yourself first, including running linters and tests
15:50 Conclusion: Show me a good pull request

[patrykseweryn]

Another amazing video, really appreciate your work!

[marcusbointon]

Nice video! I've seen many of these in PRs I receive, but sadly have also been guilty of a few of them myself...
Minor audio tip; you have some bump and pop going on with plosives, so add a high-pass or low shelving filter to roll off frequencies below 80-100Hz. It also helps reduce keyboard rumble when you're typing (though you don't have much of that).

[hamzaikram]

Thank you for this amazing content 😃👍🤗

[natenatters]

Nice to see you back on YT!

Semi-related question, do you plan on doing a video on git workflows? Gitflow/ Github flow/ Trunk branching?

I looked into it recently and now dont know what I prefer 😆 For small teams and web apps/ continuously delivered software, maybe feature branches are bad 👀

[AFellowGentleman]

I came here out of frustration with my job.
My prs go on for days, there are so many comments and so much small insignificant stuff that they complain about, like white space, not breaking out string constants, validation and error handling,

I end up feeling really bad about It.

I do lots of tests, but of course, they are not good if they are not testing for the correct behaviour.

[doanthanh]

thanks for your video

I have a question

what will you do if you create a pull request with a lot of changing files?

I myself sometimes create that kind of pull request. Or I have reviewed that pull request. To be honest, it is very difficult to review. What is your advice?

Also, what will you do if you have to review a PR with not familiar technology or frame work? for i.e. I am backend engineer but I get some FE (Angular) pull request then I get many troubles to review that

thank you

[zachariascreutznacher]

Hi Matt, great video thanks!
Do you at your company have pre-commit hooks, which start tests, linting and stuff like this before commit?
Or does each developer need to call these commands itself before committing?

[domodiak]

Fixing a bug - 20 minutes
Handing the pull request - 45 minutes