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Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

What do you do when the owner of the repository just ignores your pull request? I put hard work into some improvements and I would also change and adapt them to the repository owner's liking, but he just doesn't reply. He doesn't even say he doesn't have time, he's just completely absent. (And yes, the library is very popular and used by many) It's annoying because I depend on that library, so now I have to depend on my own branch which is obviously not main.

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You first submit an issue where you ask if the maintainer(s) would be open for a PR. That way you wont waste any time building something that might be ignored.

The best thing is to try and find out beforehand whether your pull request will actually get looked at.

It's also not so uncommon for maintainers to just get burned out and disappear for a while, so you might get a reply still.

I made a directory[1] where you can filter projects by things like how long maintainers take to reply, although this isn't too helpful for the specific project in question of course.

[1] - https://sourcesort.com/contribute

I had a similar experience. I sent in a bug fix and some new features. The maintainer partially accepted my fix and ignored the other patches. After many messages and additional work, he just said the features would not be added to the project and that I was free to maintain my own version.

Sometimes it's better to just let go.

They probably had their reasons for that... at least you got a closure.

That's why it probably good to talk about bigger fixes first, so you can align your visions.

Try sending them an email. Be polite, and ask them if they'd be willing to take a look at your change. Make sure to explain why you made it and how it'd improve the project.

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