Contributing to Django's URL Reversing Feature

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Django! Your work on adding query string support to Django's URL reversing functionality addresses a long-standing feature request.

Regarding Your Contribution

Your approach to implementing query string support for django.urls.reverse is a good starting point. The feature would indeed be valuable across all three areas you mentioned:

1. django.urls.reverse
2. django.shortcuts.redirect
3. The url template tag

Design Considerations

You've correctly identified the main challenge: these functions currently assume all kwargs are URL parameters. Some design approaches to consider:

1. Special parameter names: Introduce dedicated parameters like query_dict or query_params that would be explicitly for query strings
2. Parameter separation: Use a convention to separate URL kwargs from query string parameters
3. Backward compatibility: Ensure any solution doesn't break existing code

Improving Your Current PR

For your current implementation:

1. Ensure comprehensive test coverage for different query string scenarios
2. Add documentation that clearly explains the new functionality
3. Consider edge cases like URL encoding of query parameters

Contributing to Django

Here are some general tips for contributing to Django:

1. Community Discussion: As mentioned in the documentation, it's important to discuss feature requests on the Django Forum before proceeding with implementation. This ensures community consensus.

2. Follow Django's Contribution Guidelines: Make sure your code follows Django's style guide and includes appropriate tests and documentation.

3. Start Small: Your approach of starting with reverse() before tackling the other components is good practice.

4. Named URL Patterns: As noted in the documentation, using named URL patterns for reversing is recommended over Python paths for performance and security reasons.

5. DRY Principle: Your contribution aligns well with Django's philosophy of avoiding hard-coded URLs and maintaining a DRY approach to URL management.

For the next steps, I'd recommend:

1. Finalize your implementation for reverse()
2. Create a detailed proposal for how the feature would work across all three components
3. Seek feedback from the Django community on your approach

This is a valuable contribution that would enhance Django's URL handling capabilities while maintaining its commitment to clean, maintainable code.