empty-request-changes

A rule that is off by default: it reports a review requesting changes whose body names nothing blocking and points at no inline comment once a decisions table turns it on.

What it catches

A review requesting changes whose body names nothing blocking and points at no inline comment.

Dimension

evidence: a claim says more or less than what was shown. A finding is counted on the dimension of its rule, the cost it names to the reader.

Why

A review that requests changes holds the merge; GitHub's review API requires its body. Google's review guide (eng-practices, "The Standard of Code Review") asks the reviewer to say what blocks, and Ebert et al. (SANER 2019) found missing rationale the most frequent cause of confusion. A body naming code, a path, a line, a failure, a list of items or the inline comments passes. It needs the review's event (--event), and judges nothing without it. It is inferred from those sources rather than measured, so it advises.

Default decision

The code is PRF8032. The decision depends on the kind of text judged:

Changing it

A decisions table sets this rule to deny, advise or off, for everything judged or for the files a glob matches. Proofread reads the table from the file its -decisions flag names:

{
  "rules": {"empty-request-changes": "deny"},
  "paths": {"blog/**": {"empty-request-changes": "off"}}
}

rules applies to every file. A glob in paths applies to the files it matches, and the last match wins. A rule set to off never reports.

Seeing it

A finding names the rule, its code and the decision that applies, and links here:

{"rule": "empty-request-changes", "code": "PRF8032", "decision": "off", "url": "https://eli.gladman.cc/magus/reference/proofread/empty-request-changes/"}

proofread rules prints this entry with every other rule's.

See also

• All proofread rules - every rule, grouped by what it checks
• Writing rules - how the rules apply to this repository's pages and pull requests
• The findings contract - the fields every finding carries