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When is a pull request too big?

Smaller pull requests are faster to write and easier to review. Here are 4 tests to see if your PR might be too big.

Smaller pull requests are faster to write and easier to review. But how do you know when your pull request is getting “too big”?

There’s no hard and fast rule, but here are a few “yellow flags” for your consideration. If you start to see your PR crossing one of these thresholds, ask if you can push what you’ve done, and save the rest for another PR.

  • Does the PR have more than 50-100 lines of changes?
  • Does the PR touch more than 5-10 files?
  • Does the PR contain more than 5-10 commits?
  • Does the PR contain changes written more than 8 hours apart?
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