Kill Shill Drill

Kill/Shill Drill (Kill/Shill/Merge) is an PR and issue triaging exercise done in person at CoreDev events.

Goals

• Close open issues and PRs that are unlikely to go anywhere (Kill)
• Remind contributors of PRs and issues that may be interesting to review or work on (Shill)
• Remind maintainers of PRs that are ready to be merged (Merge)

Process

During a Kill/Shill session, the session leader will present PRs and issues, generally starting with ones that have not received any activity recently. If the opener of a PR or issue is present, they are often asked to briefly describe the PR or issue. If they feel that it is still important to keep open, they can argue why others should be interested in it. During the discussion, those who are interested in reviewing or working on the PR or issue can volunteer to be mentioned or review requested. After brief discussion, the session leader will ask for opinions on what to do with the PR.

Actions

The following actions on a PR or issue may be taken during a Kill/Shill session:

• Do nothing: There may be ongoing activity with a PR or issue that there is no need for any action to be taken
• "Are you still working on this?" Comment: PRs or issues that have had no recent activity and seem stale (e.g. needs rebase for a long time) may receive a comment asking the original poster if their PR or issue is still relevant.
• Close as stale: PRs and issues that are definitely stale (e.g. no response to a prior "Are you still working on this?", needs rebase for a very long time) may be closed.
• Close as no interest: PRs and issues that have no activity outside of the opener may be uninteresting to all other contributors. These may be closed as a lack of anyone else commenting is likely an indicator that there is no interest in reviewing a PR or working on an issue, and therefore unlikely to progress. If the original poster is present during the session, they can also elect to close their own PR or issue if they do not feel strongly enough about it to keep working on it.
• Close as up for grabs: If a PR is stale but contributors agree that the idea is still worth working on, it may be closed as "Up for grabs" to allow someone else to work on it.
• Request reviewers: If a contributor present is interested in a working on or reviewing a PR or issue, they can ask to be added as a requested reviewer or cc'd to the conversation.
• Set aside for merging: If a contributors think that a PR has substantial review and is ready for merging, the PR can be set aside for maintainers to evaluate and merge later.

Although any of the above actions may be taken during a Kill/Shill session, these are not necessarily permanent. The original poster of each PR or issue is still free to comment afterwards asking for it to be reopened and to continue discussion.

Canned Responses

The following canned responses may be left on a PR or issue:

• Are you still working on this?
• This PR does not seem to have attracted much attention from reviewers and is therefore lacking conceptual support. As such, it does not seem important enough right now to keep it sitting idle in the list of open PRs. Closing due to lack of interest.
• Closing this as it has not had any activity in a while. If you are interested in continuing work on this, please leave a comment so that it can be reopened.
• This feature request does not seem to have attracted much attention from other contributors. As such, it does not seem important enough to keep it sitting around idle in the list of open issues. Closing due to lack of interest. Pull requests with improvements are always welcome.