Samba maintainers ----------------- This file lists the maintainers for subsystems in Samba. Please see the end of the file for information on how the maintainers system works. If you can't work out who the maintainer is for some code, please ask on the samba-technical list or on the samba-technical IRC channel. ======================================================================= directory: lib/tevent/ maintainers: Stefan Metzmacher policy: All commits require review by the maintainer. If no maintainer is available for longer than a week discussion on the samba-technical list and review by 2 Samba-Team members is needed (e.g. Andrew Tridgell and Volker Lendecke ). Larger changes need also discussion on the samba-technical list and review by all maintainers. directory: lib/tsocket/ maintainers: Stefan Metzmacher policy: All commits require review by the maintainer. If no maintainer is available for longer than a week discussion on the samba-technical list and review by 2 Samba-Team members is needed. Larger changes need also discussion on the samba-technical list and review by all maintainers. files: buildtools/**, source4/**/wscript maintainers: Andrew Tridgell Jelmer Vernooij policy: small commits to master allowed if all existing tests pass. Larger commits require discussion on the samba-technical list and review by the maintainer files: lib/tdb maintainers: Rusty Russell policy: Mail/CC changes to the maintainer, commit the changes unless the maintainer objects. files: lib/talloc maintainers: Andrew Tridgell Rusty Russell policy: small commits to master allowed if all existing tests pass. Larger commits require discussion on samba-technical list and review by the maintainer files: lib/tevent/py*, lib/talloc/py*, source4/lib/ldb/py*, lib/tdb/py* maintainers: Jelmer Vernooij policy: Larger commits require pre-push review by the maintainer or one of the maintainers of the containing subsystem. Other non-trivial (typo, etc) commits require pre- or post-push review by the maintainer or one of the maintainers of the containing subsystem. ======================================================================= Samba Maintainers System ------------------------ The Samba project has adopted a maintainers system, with the following approach: - we have created a new 'MAINTAINERS.txt' file in the root of the git tree - that file will contain a list of subsystems, and along with each subsystem a list of maintainers - subsystems may be subdirectories, or logical groups of files (for example "build system" or "selftest" could be subsystems that span multiple directories) - if a subsystem is not listed in the MAINTAINERS.txt file, then this maintainers proposal does not apply to that subsystem. The previous Samba development methods apply to unlisted subsystems. - when we first create the MAINTAINERS.txt it will be empty, thus on the first day of adoption there is no actual change to our development practices - we will add subsystems to the MAINTAINERS.txt file via consensus within the Samba Team. This means that someone would propose themselves, or another team member, as a subsystem maintainer, and if there are no objections then they can push a change to the maintainers file after a couple of days waiting for replies. If there is an existing maintainer for that subsystem then at minimum the person proposing should wait for a positive ack from the previous maintainer. - a typical subsystem declaration would be: directory: /libds maintainers: Andrew Bartlett Andrew Tridgell policy: small commits to master allowed if all existing tests pass. Larger commits require discussion on samba-technical list and review by the maintainer - the maintainers for a subsystem may update the policy for that subsystem at any time by pushing a commit to the MAINTAINERS.txt file. Significant changes should also be sent to the samba-technical list to ensure that all developers are aware of the policy change - a subsystem may have multiple maintainers, and it is expected that this will be the case for many of our subsystems. - a maintainer may delegate responsibility to someone else for a period of time (such as during rapid development or when the maintainer is away). A maintainer may also appoint a backup maintainer. These changes should be noted in the maintainers file, and removed when no longer relevent. - maintainer handover would happen by agreement between the old and new maintainer, and is signified by a commit to the MAINTAINERS.txt file. If agreement cannot be reached then we can resolve the disagreement using discussions on the team list. If agreement still can't be reached then the maintainer won't change. What does it mean to be a maintainer? ------------------------------------- If you are a maintainer for a subsystem then you have some additional rights and responsibilies for that code. Specifically: - you should make time to review any proposed changes to any subsystems that you maintain. You should then provide feedback on proposed changes or sign off on the changes once you are happy with them. - you may choose the policy for the subsystems you maintain. That policy could be a permissive one, where you allow for small changes without review, or it could be a strict one, where you only allow reviewed changes to be pushed. - being a maintainer for a subsystem does not override the "right of veto" of other team members for technical objections. See the "right of veto" section below for more information. - the maintainers can set the developmental direction of the subsystem, but should strive to achieve concensus where possible with other team members for the benefit of the whole project. Note that if you set a permissive policy on your subsystem, so that small changes may be pushed without review, you are still responsible for reviewing changes if someone specifically asks you to review a patch. Try to reuse policy wording --------------------------- It would be good if we end up with only a few sets of policy wording, rather than a completely different policy for each subsystem. To try to achieve that, maintainers should try to re-use an existing policy wording if possible. The right of veto ----------------- Over the last few years the Samba Team has started to use a +1/-1 voting system, which was inspired by the Apache voting system for technical issues (see http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html). For the maintainers proposal to work, I think we need to ensure that everyone understands what a -1 "veto" vote means on a technical issue. For purely technical issues, the +1/-1 voting system should not be a "most votes wins" system. Instead a single -1 vote is supposed to override any number of +1 votes, so a -1 vote is a "veto", and all team members have the right to give a -1 veto vote on any purely technical issue. Along with the right to give a -1 veto vote comes the responsibility to backup that veto with a technical argument, and the willingness to then defend your argument in any subsequent discussions and to work with the patch proposer to find a solution. If you do not backup your -1 veto vote, or you are unwilling on unable to participate in any discussions that arise from that veto, then the veto vote may be disregarded. Note that a veto is supposed to be used only for purely technical reasons, so for example pointing out a security concern with a change, or pointing out that the code may segfault or cause a regression of functionality.