Hi all,
I’ve done a few contributions and merge requests to the official KiCAD Libraries (Footprints, Footprint Generator, Packages 3D and Packages 3D source) around 3-4 weeks ago.
I know there is only a few devs who approve it, so I have to be patient.
However does anyone know how long it usually takes for the developers to accept the merge requests?
I can see some from a year ago still not accepted 
(not sure what the reason is).
Many thanks.
I recognize what you are saying. There are reasons, probably. The last time I made a contribution it was reviewed in a couple of weeks, I made the required changes and then the process stalled. The librarians were very busy reorganizing the libraries at that time, so I do not blame them, but it still is a pity.
My project at the time was finished using my personal library with the part in it, so the model was not lost.
I remember your post from a while ago asking about libraries. A lot of librarians responded to you at that time. Reviewing submissions then took more than half of all their resources, and I believe in a more recent thread it was mentioned they were down to one active volunteer. What is needed most for the libraries project aren’t submissions, but reviewers.
I wonder if there is some way to set up a web workflow that can crowdsource the reviewing. Currently the barrier is high, but if people could do one or parts of several that would spread the work.
Hi everyone, I’m one of the librarians.
We’re no longer down to one active volunteer, we’ve recruited several contributors to be librarians and are still trying to grow the pool of people who can review. We do need to train everyone who joins so it takes some time, but I’m very happy to put in that time to get more people on the team. If you want to be a librarian, message me on here and we’ll take it from there.
Up to last autumn, we had a very acute shortage of reviewers (down to one active librarian) and in the time leading up to that contributions piled up into an enormous backlog. We’ve gotten it down a bit but it’s going to take a long time to work through it all. Just before the v7 release we had an incredible number of contributions, averaging 6 new merge requests per day. We got a lot of new librarians to help out and many of them/us took a lot of time during their end-of-year holidays to help deal with that.
Since then, things have slowed down a bit as most librarians have non-KiCad matters to attend to, but we are still reviewing contributions. As we have a history of burning out librarians with too large workloads and would prefer this not to happen again, we make a point of spreading the load and not putting pressure on anyone to do a given amount of work. We’re all volunteers with other things to deal with so the pace things happen at will vary as a result. Contributions still come in at a steady pace of 2-4 per day so they do occasionally pile up, but we can keep up with the current speed. The reason things are slow is that we are simultaneously trying to work through the backlog. Any and all help is very welcome.
Greg, I’ve been looking at your contribution and will get back to you on it soon. Sorry for the delay.
mifi, can you point me to the contribution that stalled? I’ll look into what happened there.
retiredfeline, we do have some web-based tooling to make our lives easier, but we do need to give librarians some basic training in processes and policies. Feel free to point people to me if they’re interested in doing this kind of thing, we had two new librarians join in just the past week.
Thank you all for the replies!
In the meantime one of the librarians / devs got back to me with some comments regarding my merge requests.
Something is happening! Hurray! 
Hi @kliment, I would like to volunteer to be a librarian. I’ve some years of professional experience as a HW hardware design engineer and I use KiCAD for my personal projects. I could help
@Navalog Awesome! Is there an email address I can reach you at? You can send me a private message on here also.
Thanks for your comments @kliment . I understood the situation at that time, in the middle of a library conversion and I was warned the merge request would probably be delayed.
My merge request at that time is here: Add LM5156H and LM51561H switching regulator symbols (!3236) · Merge requests · KiCad / KiCad Libraries / KiCad Symbols · GitLab
It was the for the LM5156xH Boost/Sepic controller and has one update after the merge request was made.
Good to know the situation is a bit more relaxed at the moment. I will keep that in mind when I have a symbol to contribute.
I will start by rereading the wiki on how to contribute. I guess there will be an updated Library guideline for version 7.
Starting point: Contribute | KiCad EDA
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