This reminds me that there is more nuance than I originally wrote. Github has 4 PR states and as far as I can gather from the last 15 years of community practice this is how we've treated them:
- Open (green): request for review and author desires to have it merged - Closed (red): ether a core dev closed it to signal it will not be merged or the submitter self-closes it to signal they will not pursue it further - Merged (purple): a core dev merged the PR into master - Draft (grey): pull request shared so others can view the work or collaborate but not ready for review and/or merging (we used to use "WIP" in the title, as this a relatively new GH feature) I do think these have been distinct meanings and arose through many past conversations and practices. At one point in the past, we even used labels to designate "author's turn" or "reviewer's turn" to indicate who's responsibility it is to take the next steps in moving a PR forward. The green open PRs stall because we are waiting on one of these turns. This is not the first time we've discussed the fact that SymPy has a large number of open PRs and whether we should close them for other reasons than above. We can introduce closing a PR due to inactivity, but I do not see why doing this anything other than causing you to have to click an extra tab to see these PRs. I have always thought the stalebot tool in some repositories to be obnoxious and annoying. Some times it takes a long time to get a PR merged. I just searched "stalebot" and this was the first article that popped up: https://jacobtomlinson.dev/posts/2024/most-stale-bots-are-anti-user-and-anti-contributor-but-they-dont-have-to-be/. I agree with it being a turn-off to new contributors (and also just annoying to standing contributors). The second part of the article gives some tips not unlike our turns method we used in the past. I think it is also ok that we don't get to every PR or issue and that accepting that issues/PRs are an unwinnable Whac-A-Mole game. We've been staring at a huge list of issues and PRs for decades now. I'm not sure what closing a bunch for inactivity will change. Jason moorepants.info +01 530-601-9791 On Sun, Feb 1, 2026 at 1:53 PM Oscar Benjamin <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 1 Feb 2026 at 06:53, Jason Moore <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > In the past we've used the "closed" designation on a PR to mean: 1) this > is merged into master and 2) this will definitely not be merged into > master. If we close PRs based on inactivity time, then we have PRs labeled > "closed" which are neither 1 or 2, they still have the state "could be or > might be merged to master or might be rejected" but now we've labeled them > with "closed" which would seemingly imply 1 or 2. So it seems to me if you > close based on inactivity time, then the meaning of "open" or "closed" PR > no longer has distinct meanings. > > I think that currently open vs closed does not have distinct meanings. > Most PRs in the open state should really be in the closed state. It is > just that no one has closed them. Even if the PR is closed that is > usually because the author decided to close the PR which does not > necessarily reflect a decision from the project that the PR was the > wrong approach. > > If we close based on inactivity then an open PR has an objective > meaning that there is some recent activity. A PR that is closed would > have a message saying that it was closed because of inactivity and > then it is clear that that is not necessarily a rejection of what is > in the PR. > > Most of the time the reason a PR has not been merged is not really to > do with making a decision about what the PR is trying to do but just > because the author hasn't done it properly and at the time when anyone > looked at it it was not clear if the author was going to fix the > problems or not. There may or may not be a comment from a reviewer > explaining what the problem with the PR is. > > -- > Oscar > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sympy" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/CAHVvXxSphOcZ%2BDYen_Z27FtUwcSVmO9iR2S55B%3D%2BYL%2BjNmX_Lg%40mail.gmail.com > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/CAP7f1Ajyix18%2BfndH2_vG0xhWCyof7TmWwbvjoAnedSHccim0w%40mail.gmail.com.
