Document and enforce pull request review guidelines

Open Beginner friendly
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@dashorst is already working on this.

Since Nov 8, 2026.

  • #1869 by @dashorst — open

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
76/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
java

Research direction

Start with the repository-root AGENTS.md and identify how its existing contribution guidance is organized. Draft a root REVIEW.md covering the seven review areas listed in the issue, then reference it from AGENTS.md. Done when both files provide a consistent, usable review checklist for the proposed checks.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Write down what a review of a Wicket pull request checks, so human and agent reviewers apply the same checks to every change, and make the checklist part of the workflow.

AGENTS.md describes how to write a change: format, commits, build, API compatibility, Javadoc, comments, security. Nothing describes what to check when reviewing one. The checks this issue should cover:

  • License compliance: ASF headers, the licenses of new dependencies under the ASF third-party policy, and LICENSE, LICENSE-binary, NOTICE and licenses/ for third-party code or assets copied into the tree.
  • OSGi and JPMS: the bundle manifest and module-info.java stay consistent with the pom when packages or dependencies change.
  • Performance: a change to a hot path keeps its complexity and memory footprint, or shows with a benchmark that the cost is worth it. During the dependency cleanup for #1862, a first draft replaced LinkedMap in MarkupContainer and made single child removal O(n).
  • Accessibility: markup, components and JavaScript that render UI keep meeting WCAG.
  • Documentation: changes users notice update the migration guide, user guide or Javadoc in the same pull request.
  • Serialization: changes to the serialized form of components and models, which affect stored pages and session size.
  • Tests: new test classes end in Test, or Surefire never runs them.

Proposal: a REVIEW.md in the repository root with these checks, referenced from AGENTS.md so agents writing a change check it against the same list.

Dominant language
Java
Stars
799
Forks
420
Avg merge
18h 37m
Merged PRs (30d)
140

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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