Week 4 recap GSoC 2025 - draft merge request and feedback

Intro

Merge requests (MR) are a useful feature in version control systems to propose changes to large codebases. This helps keep track of major changes and organize individual contributions. This week I created a draft MR to keep track of my progress and to gain constructive feedback.

Draft MR

Why use draft MRs instead of just a separate development branch? I'm glad you asked! Compared to a development branch, a draft MR includes commits from your development branch, reviewers can create threads (such as TODO tasks or add comments), and major changes can be tracked so a reviewer has more context behind your changes. On a project with hundreds or thousands of contributors, development branches can be difficult to manage.

Progress

In my draft MR I received valuable feedback and made improvements. So far, I added licensing information, removed placeholder comments (following best practices), and implemented the rendering of the floating bar on Selection Tool activation. I wouldn’t have been able to make these important changes or get one step closer to building out the feature without the feedback. On top of this, by getting feedback through a draft MR, I am able to look back at old threads or comments easily compared to reading IRC or chat through Matrix, which can have multiple active conversations at once.

Conclusion

Getting feedback can be tough if you cannot convey your question properly, cannot provide an example, or you cannot find the appropriate time to ask. Through a draft MR, I was able to get constructive feedback that led to small improvements I could make immediately, instead of creating an MR later down the road and making large changes. This also provides me an opportunity to check in with the community outside of IRC.

I learned that certain modes of communication can be more beneficial than others given the circumstances and keeping track of progress in a transparent manner helps you grow as a developer.

Contact

To anyone reading this, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m always open to suggestions and thoughts on how to improve as a developer and as a person.
Email: ross.erosales@gmail.com
Matrix: @rossr:matrix.org