> Of course, it is not reasonable to demand that an already-overworked maintainer-for-free find extra hours to have the pre-PR discussion either. It needs to be exploratory and respect the maintainers' timescales
I absolutely didn't mean to imply that. I also think that a pre-PR discussion can be useful because if the maintainer doesn't have time to say they want a PR that's a decent hint they won't have time to handle the PR.
Sorry if you thought I thought you were implying pressure. Not at all.
I thought your comment was helpful and supportive.
I just wanted to clarify, for readers, that expecting anything at any stage from a maintainer can be expecting too much sometimes. It is time and work for them after all, and usually it's in their limited personal time, for free.
Sometimes, they have already exhausted all the time they could put into the project; even a brief "thanks" email is too much when you have too many for whatever available time and energy you have. People don't always realise that, when they say "the maintainer should just [...]". A lot of people wanting [...] adds up.
I absolutely didn't mean to imply that. I also think that a pre-PR discussion can be useful because if the maintainer doesn't have time to say they want a PR that's a decent hint they won't have time to handle the PR.