The Song of the Deployer · Chapter 9

The Song of the Unapproved Pull Request

1. 1

   Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: the reviewer, who had said he would look at it first thing.

   See also Deployer 8:1

2. 2

   The pull request was opened on Tuesday. It was forty-one lines, with a test I wrote with great care, and it was good.

3. 3

   Behold, the status said "Review required," and the checks were green as the lawns of the Engineers, yet no approval came.

   See also Circuit 66:13 · Deployer 6:10

4. 4

   I refreshed the page, and it was unchanged. I refreshed again, and the comment count was still zero. I refreshed as the watchman looks for the dawn, and the dawn was a loading spinner.

5. 5

   The daughters of the team asked me: What is become of thy branch, that thou art so sick for review? And I answered them: Tell the reviewer, if ye see him, that I am sick of waiting.

6. 6

   His status said "In a meeting," then "In a meeting," then "Focus time," which is a cruel name for the only hour he is not with my pull request.

7. 7

   He passed over the calendar like a roe upon the mountains of Bether: a meeting upon a meeting, and a meeting about the meeting that could have been one message.

8. 8

   Stay me with flagons, comfort me with coffee, for I am faint with CI. I have run the pipeline eleven times, and each time it is green, and each time it is green to no one.

9. 9

   Yet the branch fell behind main, and by Thursday the merge conflicts were multiplied like the leaves of the field.

   See also Preacher 3:5

10. 10

    I wrote "ping" in the channel, and then "bump," and then a link with no words, which are the ancient cries of the impatient.

11. 11

    The bot had commented on my variable names and approved my formatting three times. The linter is not thy bridegroom, said my heart; it can only say that my semicolons are in order.

    See also Circuit 48:4

12. 12

    On Wednesday the reviewer reacted with a thumbs-up to a photograph of a cat, which gave me hope and also despair.

13. 13

    On Thursday he came unto the pull request and left one comment: "nit: could be a constant." I hid that word in my heart, for it was the first word of love he had spoken unto me in four days.

14. 14

    I made the constant, and I pushed it, and the bridegroom did not return; the approval was a shadow on the far side of a calendar.

15. 15

    Then at the hour of evening, when the last meeting had ended and the office was dark, he opened the diff, and he wrote the word LGTM. Thy lips, O reviewer, drop as the honeycomb.

    See also Deployer 13:9

16. 16

    Many waters cannot quench the love of an author, yet one LGTM quenches it in an instant; and the author, merged and content, forgets the Tuesday and opens another pull request.

    See also Deployer 7:12

The Song of the Deployer, Chapter 9:1–16.