Ship an OSS Patch With a Reviewer Question Bank, Not Just a Diff

A maintainer received a patch request after a late shift, but the request contained only a three-line diff without any reproduction steps. The commit message claimed the parser no longer crashed, yet there was no clear way to reproduce the issue. The reviewer struggled to understand the changes, and the pull request remained unreviewed for days.

This issue, while often attributed to a missing brilliant patch or poor git hygiene, is usually due to insufficient information from the contributor. The real problem lies in the lack of a question bank, a document containing the specific questions a reviewer needs to answer to evaluate the patch properly. This artifact, named REVIEWER_QUESTIONS.md, provides a structured list of questions that track the patch's changes, ensuring the reviewer has all necessary context before starting the review.

By generating this file from the branch's paths, headers, and exit codes, contributors can provide a comprehensive guide for reviewers, turning the pull request into a clear evidence-based discussion rather than a guessing game. The proposed workflow outlines a local checklist for reviewers to follow, ensuring they have the required information to make informed decisions without unnecessary delays.