The main goal of a Merge Request Coach is to help merge requests from the community get merged into GitLab.
~"Community contribution".Merge requests requiring attention email to follow-up on inactive MRs. Each coach should pick a few MRs to follow-up each week.We are working on adding the following Merge Request Coach Specialties
As a Merge Request Coach you will collaborate with people from the wider GitLab community and respond or close their merge requests per need.
With each merge request opened by a wider community member, it's important to note GitLab is not their main focus. They have contributed to GitLab out of kindness, and we should aim to give them the space they need to fulfill their merge request.
After a merge request from a wider community member has been submitted and you have provided feedback, allow a period of up to two weeks for the community member to continue their work before following up with the community member through a comment in the merge request.
Some MRs may not need triaging and as an MR coach you should feel empowered to approve an MR immediately before passing it to the appropriate maintainer(s) for merging if appropriate. Examples of these types of MRs include:
Sometimes community contributions become stale or obsolete and changes become no longer relevant or applicable. If the changes are no longer needed, it's fine to close the merge request whether the author is responsive or not. If there’s an open discussion or questions for the author, allow some time for them to get back to the discussion before closing the merge request.
In all cases, always provide some context on why the merge request is being closed as this can lead to fewer questions later on and create a point for future reference which would be useful for team members and community contributors.
Last but not least, if there's an opportunity to provide any help or pointers for future contributions try to do that. This could be pointing to code review guidelines, documentation on how to contribute, or getting help while contributing to GitLab.
Sometimes MRs are opened by wider community contributors by accident with no changes. In this instance close the merge request straight away, without triage labels, with a polite message to the contributor asking them to reopen the merge request once there is something to review. It may be that they intended to open a merge request at some point and we want to ensure that they feel their contribution will be welcomed at an appropriate time.
An example response could be:
Hi {CONTRIBUTOR_NAME} 👋 \
Thanks for contributing to GitLab 🙇 ✨ \
It seems that this MR does not contain any changes 🤔 \
Because of that I will close this MR but please feel free to reopen if you are still planning to contribute ❤ \
If you have any other questions please don't hesitate and ping me 🙂
More information on the Merge Request Coach role is available in the handbook.
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