I’ve recently submitted my first HA pull request, to add a missing feature to the Met Office weather integration. When you open a new pull request, you get a big checklist list of things to run through to make sure you have supplied the right information, and checked your code properly. As a first-timer, I found this very useful. But the last item caught me out:
I have reviewed two other open pull requests in this repository.
OK. I’m happy to help, but what exactly is required for a review? Do I need to check through all the items in the PR checklist (which the PR owner ought to have done anyway, and are often checked automatically by the CI system)? Is there anything else I should be looking for? Am I supposed to try out the proposed changes in a devcontainer, or is it sufficient just to read through the code in GitHub? Can I review a PR for an integration, if I don’t physically own that device?
And once I’ve completed my review, how do I record it? Are any special permissions needed? Do I have to report any particular details or findings, or do I just post a comment saying “Looks OK to me…”
It isn’t the first time this has been asked (there’s an open issue against the HA Developers website), but I haven’t found any guidance on Google or the forums. I’m not a professional dev, so would appreciate some advice, both to better understand how my PR is likely to be reviewed, and so I can help out with the review backlog.
So what are your suggestions? What would you expect reviewers to check, and what feedback would you expect them to provide? What type of feedback is the most constructive?
