Attending your first PR Review Club

If you’re thinking about attending PR Review Club, welcome! We love new participants. Below is information to help you get started as a first-timer.

The club meets on Wednesday and Thursdays at 17:00 UTC in the #bitcoin-core-pr-reviews IRC channel on libera.chat. Every month, a Bitcoin protocol developer will host two 60-minute discussion on a Bitcoin Core pull request. The code of conduct details the behavior we expect from all participants.

If you’re new to IRC (Internet Relay Chat), it has its own little culture and etiquette.

The basics:

• Follow the Golden Rule: treat others as you’d like to be treated.
• Assume the best in others (tone is hard over text).
• Talk in full sentences, but don’t stress too much about grammar or capitalization.
• To respond directly to someone, start your message with their full nick and a colon, like this: otherperson: thanks for the help! There’s no need to @ them.
• Just observing (sometimes called lurking) is completely fine.

For more on this subject, check out The Beginner’s guide to IRC.

You’ll get the most out of Review Club if you’ve reviewed the PR going into the meeting, but it’s definitely not mandatory in order to attend. You can always show up as an observer. If you’re worried (don’t be!), read the meeting log of a past PR Review Club. You’ll see it’s very casual.

If you’d like to more actively participate, you should clone the Bitcoin repository. You should also check out and build the PR branch locally and run all tests. Take time to review the code changes and read the comments on the PR being covered.

There are also notes and questions you can review and prepare. Make a note of any questions you want to ask.

The meeting will begin with #startmeeting and “hi” from the meeting host. Feel free to respond with “hi” so people know you’re at your keyboard and participating. The host will poll everyone on whether they’ve reviewed the PR (y/n). Don’t feel embarrassed to say “n”.

Questions may be asked at any time. If you’d like to ask a question, there’s no need to ask permission. If the question is off-topic, the host will kindly let you know. The host will end the session with #endmeeting at the end of the hour. Thanking the host at the end of the meeting is always appreciated!

Follow the PR Review Club on Twitter for scheduling announcements.

We look forward to having you at the next PR Review Club!