Why you should use PR Checklists

In praise of checklists in PRs/MRs

I’ve previously written in support of checklists and using them.

This article focuses specifically on a specific kind of useful checklist: PR Templates and MR templates.

There do exist other barebones checklists in other OSS projects.¹ But I felt like putting one together explicitly for others to feel free to riff on.²

<!--
  This template is a guide to the Code Review process.
  Change it to be what you need.
-->

# What does this change do?

# How have you tested your change?

# Checklist for Submitter
- [ ] Added or updated documentation
- [ ] Tests for new functionality and regression tests for bug fixes
- [ ] Screenshots attached (for UI changes)

## DB Migrations, if applicable
[ ] Do we have both up and down?
[ ] Have db migrations been tested?

# Resources

- [Design](https://www.figma.com)
- [Ticket-123](https://myticketsystem)

Notice what’s not on the list?

Nothing about there being tests, builds passing, or linters passing; that’s all CI stuff, and it’ll likely waffle back and forth as more commits get added.

We have modern tools. As much as possible, let those tools do work for you.

1. Spotify has a good ones for luigi and backstage

2. If for some reason you feel like copying this specific one and need some license, then fine. Let’s just say it’s under Creative Commons License 3.0. You don’t need to email or anything just use it.