Skip to main content
`Ctrl`+`K`

# Reviewing Pull Requests

## Using workflow features

When reviewing pull requests, please use workflow tracking features on Github as appropriate:

1. After you have finished reviewing, and want to ask for the submitter to make the changes:

   - Change your review status to “Changes requested”.

     This can be done on Github, PR page, `Files changed` tab, `Review changes` (button on top right).

   - Alternatively: add the `needs-work` label.

     This can be done on the PR page, `Labels` menu on the right.

2. When you re-review the same pull request again, and want to request more changes:

   - Do the “Changes requested” thing again, even if the previous status was also ‘Changes requested’.

   - Alternatively: Remove the existing `needs-work` label, and then re-add the label back again. (Github will add a notice on the page that you did so.)

3. If you’re happy about the current status:

   - Mark the pull request as Approved (same way as Changes requested).

   - Alternatively: remove the `needs-work` label.

   - Alternatively (for core developers): merge the pull request, if you think it is ready to be merged.

This allows automatically tracking which PRs are in need of attention.

Some of the information is also visible on Github directly, although (as of Aug 2019) Github does not show which pull requests have been updated since the last review.

## Code from pull request

When you review a pull request created by someone else, it’s helpful to have a copy of their code on your own machine so that you can play with it locally.

One way to install the GitHub CLI, then navigate to the SciPy root directory in the terminal and enter:

    gh pr checkout PULL_REQUEST_ID

where `PULL_REQUEST_ID` is the five digit number corresponding with the pull request (e.g. `10286` for PR #10286). This immediately checks out the pull request into a branch with a name matching the one the PR author used.

Assuming you set up your development environment according to Building from source, you can now activate your development environment:

    conda activate scipy-dev

build the code and test it:

    spin test -v

and if you `import` SciPy from within IPython (start it with `spin ipython`), you’ll be importing the author’s modified version of SciPy.

If you want to collaborate with the author on their PR, you might instead want to set up a new remote to the author’s fork of SciPy:

    git remote add REMOTE_NAME https://github.com/AUTHOR/scipy.git

where `AUTHOR` is the author’s GitHub user name and `REMOTE_NAME` is whatever name you want to use to refer to this author’s repository.

From there, you can view the author’s branches:

    git remote show REMOTE_NAME

and create your own branch based on one of them:

    git checkout --track REMOTE_NAME/BRANCH_NAME

where `BRANCH_NAME` is the name of the branch you want to start from. This creates a copy of this branch (with the same name) in your local repository. If you make changes to this branch and push to your GitHub repository (`origin`), you can then create a pull request to merge your changes with the author’s repository.