Hello everyone, The lazy consensus on limiting the number of open pull requests for users without write access has passed - it ended on Thursday, 24 September 2026, 19:00 CEST with no objections from committers.
Result: * We enable GitHub's "limit concurrent open pull requests for users without write access" feature, with the limit set to 5 - the most supported value in the discussion. Committers are not affected. * Draft PRs do not count towards the limit yet - GitHub does not support counting them. Once it does, we will start counting drafts as well. Everything is in https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/73469 - besides enabling the limit in .asf.yaml, it adds a contributor guide (contributing-docs/32_open_pull_request_limit.rst) explaining why we limit open PRs, how the limit works, what to do when you reach it (finish your open PRs, keep working on branches in your fork, and help the project in other ways - especially by reviewing others' PRs), and how to reopen or restore a closed PR. Please take a look at the PR and comment there - especially at the guide and at the comment that will be posted on the closed PRs (in dev/close_prs_over_open_pr_limit.py). This is what contributors will read, so the wording matters - I would like to merge it and run the closure once we are happy with it. One-time closure of PRs over the limit: GitHub's limit only prevents opening new PRs, so once the PR is merged we will run a one-time closure (dev/close_prs_over_open_pr_limit.py): * Contributors without write access who have more than 5 open PRs will have their open PRs closed, with a comment explaining why and linking to the guide. * PRs where a maintainer is already engaged (commented or reviewed) stay open, so review work already invested is not lost. Automated triage comments do not count as engagement. * The comment asks contributors to make their first prioritization decision - choose the PRs that matter most to them and reopen them, up to 5 open at a time. Nothing is lost when a PR is closed: branches, commits and review history stay where they are. A dry run today shows 20 contributors over the limit - about 210 PRs would be closed and about 70 stay open because maintainers are engaged in them. This is not a judgement of anyone - we never told contributors before that opening many PRs at once was a problem. What we are asking for now is prioritization, and engagement with the community beyond opening PRs. Follow-ups discussed in the thread: * A bypass list, so that we can exempt contributors where it makes sense (for example for an urgent fix) - this needs .asf.yaml support, proposed in https://github.com/apache/infrastructure-asfyaml/pull/135 * We will revisit the number once we see how the open-PR queue develops - 5 is a starting point, not a final decision. Thanks everyone for the discussion - and especially to those who brought data and alternative proposals to the thread. J. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
