drive-by pr
In software development changes to an existing code are handled via change requests called "pull-request" or "pr" for short. Contributors propose changes to the code in a "pr" and the maintainer of the code reviews those changes, asked for modifications, approves or denies the submission. A good practice is to keep changes small in those "prs", so that the reviewer can easily handle the workload.
A "drive-by pr" is when a contributor creates a "pr" that is (for whatever reason) very hard to review and loads off the responsibility to check/clean up the code changes fully to the maintainer. This pattern is most often done by automatic coding agents that are tasked by their user to fix problems at larger projects without much supervision. Those "prs" often contain thousands of lines of changes that the maintainer could not possibly go through in a reasonable amount of time and would therefore need to "trust" the contributor to not introduce any bugs.
In case of a "drive-by pr" (drive-by pull-request) maintainers are morally allowed to reject the pull-request without questions asked.
A "drive-by pr" is when a contributor creates a "pr" that is (for whatever reason) very hard to review and loads off the responsibility to check/clean up the code changes fully to the maintainer. This pattern is most often done by automatic coding agents that are tasked by their user to fix problems at larger projects without much supervision. Those "prs" often contain thousands of lines of changes that the maintainer could not possibly go through in a reasonable amount of time and would therefore need to "trust" the contributor to not introduce any bugs.
In case of a "drive-by pr" (drive-by pull-request) maintainers are morally allowed to reject the pull-request without questions asked.
A maintainer gets a notification that a coworker of theirs created a pull-request for their project. The message of the coworker:
"Hey, I did a small change to the code. Nothing major, only some performance improvements. No need to check. Thanks, bye."
The maintainer takes a look at the changes: 6700 lines (20% of the total code base) changed, automatic tests fail. The maintainer to themself:
"F*ck you Jerry with your drive-by pr! Denied!"
"Hey, I did a small change to the code. Nothing major, only some performance improvements. No need to check. Thanks, bye."
The maintainer takes a look at the changes: 6700 lines (20% of the total code base) changed, automatic tests fail. The maintainer to themself:
"F*ck you Jerry with your drive-by pr! Denied!"
drive-by pr by thehumanmaintainer March 30, 2026
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