[Meta] Can PRs involving design and layout changes be passed without design review, if they're only available under labs?

[ShadowJonathan]

I just saw #19754, and i'm curious if this is something that's allowed in general;

When opening a PR that involves design and layout, would it be allowed to be merged without X-Needs-Design, if the feature is entirely contained in labs?

Notably, all features which involve visual changes involve the design team, however, seeing this exception being implied, i'm curious if more PRs could be merged and un-labbed later down the line if the design team approves of it, and/or get un-labbed without much fuss as the design team recommends tweaks, This would mean users could enjoy the feature early, while formal design gets hashed out behind the scenes.

[ShadowJonathan]

(Apologies if i jumped the gun on this, but even if, this'd be a formal request to allow PRs to land in labs if the design team is busy or blocked)

[turt2live]

It largely depends on the actual PR in question. While the formal policy allows for features to land behind labs without Design involvement, it's not usually the best way to go about things. There's also still a requirement that the dev team/product be okay with the feature moving forward, which typically happens as a discussion behind the scenes.

In the case of #19754, the goal is to accelerate progress on the feature by deliberately landing something that mostly works so the design team can create mockups and another team can write the required changes. For other cases, like developer tooling, we tend to let it through if it has an immediate need. The general case of feature development is more involved and typically works best with continuous design signoff throughout the development process.

For future reference, questions like this are best asked in the room. The issue tracker is best for raising feature requests and bug reports, not necessarily clarity on policy decisions or support.

[ShadowJonathan]

Ah, thanks for the quick response.

I didn't want to ask this question in the room, as I thought it would interrupt too much, and i think it's useful to have a issue # to refer back or forward to. I'll keep this in mind for the future though.