PGConf.dev 2026 In-Person Commitfest
The special PGConf.dev in-person commitfest runs during the week of PGConf.dev 2026. Patches are registered and reviewers are assigned ahead of the conference. Patch authors and reviewers meet during the conference week as individually agreed to discuss the patches and if appropriate move them closer to "Ready for Committer" status.
This gives all interested patch authors an opportunity to meet with and learn from experienced developers in person, and it can help facilitate moving some development projects forward in anticipation of the next PostgreSQL development cycle.
The information and rules below are meant to give participants and organizers some guidelines for how to operate this event, but they are not meant to be in the way of having an enjoyable and productive event. If there is something beyond what is discussed here, check with the organizers and/or give it a try. The main goal is to learn together.
How to participate
Every conference attendee can participate. You participate by submitting a patch (see below) or signing up to review a patch. No further signup beyond that exists.
Submitting a patch / Signing up to review
This event will be run on top of the PostgreSQL Commitfest system. Patches should be submitted to either commitfest PG20-1 or PG20-Drafts and tagged with the tag "PGConf.dev".
Reviewers who want to participate look for patches with the tag and sign up as reviewer.
Note: When you add the tag to an existing entry, you should remove all existing reviewers. (Because we can't assume that those reviewers will be at the conference or will participate in this.) The commitfest managers will do this if necessary. If necessary, one can add the previous reviewers back afterwards.
Timeline
- Signups are possible now (as of 10 April).
- Patches should be registered by 4 May at the latest (2 weeks before the conference). Later arrivals might not give reviewers enough time to prepare.
- Reviewers/committers sign up and prepare during those 2 weeks.
- Patch authors and reviewers meet during the week to discuss (perhaps more than once).
- We might present a summary or some statistics at the end of the conference week.
Some rules
- Obviously, both patch authors and reviewers must attend the conference.
- Maximum 2 patches per author (Consider the second one a backup if genuinely no one is available with expertise to review the first one.)
- More than one author or more than one reviewer is okay, but please coordinate this. The more people are involved, the harder it will be to find a time to meet.
- Everyone should sign up for themselves and as themselves. If you want to bring your team of co-authors or colleagues to the meeting, you should disclose this and request consent. Do not ambush your pairing partner with unexpected guests.
- Patches should be interesting enough to facilitate a conversation and learning experience. Patches that are trivial or mostly mechanical or that you do not understand yourself or that have already been thoroughly reviewed are not conducive.
- We are generally looking for two kinds of review pairings:
- Committer reviews patch by returning contributor. (It is assumed that the contributor generally knows their way around. The committer can help move the patch to completion.)
- Experienced developer reviews patch by new-ish contributor. (Here, the focus could be more on initial review and familiarization with process expectations, as well as getting to know.)
- (As a counterexample, it is normally useful for a new contributor to review a patch by an experienced contributor for oversights, usability, portability, etc., but this is probably not appropriate for this in-person event.)
The commitfest managers may reach out to involved parties or make adjustments of registered patches to facilitate this.
- Patches may be in need of either technical review or process guidance (or both). Use tags in the commitfest app judiciously to indicate your needs.
- The conference code of conduct applies.
- The event begins when the conference begins and ends when the conference ends. You are encouraged to keep working beyond that, of course, but that will be outside the scope of this event.
The process before and during the conference
- Patches should be in "Needs review" state before reviewer signup begins.
- Patches should pass Cirrus CI. (Unless this is the subject of the review, in which case use additional tags indicating this.)
- When adding the "PGConf.dev" tag, clear out existing reviewer entries.
- Reviewers study the patch ahead of the conference.
- Patch authors and reviewers meet during the conference to discuss feedback and decide on next steps.
- To find each other in person, if you don't know each other, in general, patch authors should reach out to reviewers to establish communication channels and arrange meetings (rather than the other way around). This will likely work better because you will have a better chance getting help at the conference locating a well-known committer than locating a first-time conference attendee or similar.
- Many experienced contributors will be very busy on Tuesday (community discussions) and Friday (unconference), so the best days to meet are probably Wednesday and Thursday. But you should already try to make contact before that.
- Room "Xerox" (Room 1500) is available for these meetings. (There will be a few other meetings in this room, but it is mostly free.) You can meet anywhere else, of course, but this should be the most comfortable. Note that this is not reserved for individual pairings, please share appropriately.
- Don't forget to post a review on pgsql-hackers, or at least a note that you met and discussed the patch, to keep everyone else in the loop.
- Set patch status to "Waiting on author" or "Ready for committer" as appropriate. This is at least to have some fun stats for this event at the end of the week.
Communicating
- The organizer of this event (that is, the commitfest manager) is Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>. Contact him with questions.
- The information desk at the conference might be a good place to get help finding rooms and people.
- The conference Discord server is the place to connect with attendees, find your review partners, etc.
- The conference organizers can be contacted for higher-level questions.
- There is a conference code of conduct committee.
- The PostgreSQL Hacking Discord server and the pgsql-hackers mailing list should be used for discussing issues related to the technical contents of a patch.
- This wiki page may be updated from time to time with emerging generally useful information.
