hfinkel added a comment.

In D77683#1973762 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D77683#1973762>, @dblaikie wrote:

> In D77683#1973757 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D77683#1973757>, @jdoerfert wrote:
>
> > In D77683#1970826 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D77683#1970826>, @mehdi_amini 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I am still not sure what "if someone has asked for extra review of a 
> > > specific area" refers to?
> >
> >
> > As said earlier
> >
> > >>   If I understand this correctly, this is meant to cover situations 
> > >> where reviewers are active in an area and indicated an interest in 
> > >> reviewing basically everything.
> > > 
> > > Pretty much, yes.
> >
> > this should mean that, if requested, all non-trivial patches should go 
> > through review. The current wording is very lenient, especially wrt. code 
> > owners.
> >  While most people I talked to don't see owners as special per se (but just 
> > assume they have more responsibility), this paragraph says they have 
> > special rights.
> >  Given the murky ways owners are "selected", I think we should have a well 
> > defined way to limit these rights without revoking the status.
>
>
> I disagree here. I think it's suitable (within the way the LLVM project 
> works) for code owners to commit without review - given they are the arbiters 
> of what's acceptable in that subcomponent - ultimately they can veto anyone 
> else (short of a broader project/code owner). Doesn't usually come to that, 
> but that's what the ownership role means.
>
> I don't think it's correct for arbitrary contributors to say "you need 
> to/this component needs review-before-commit" - the code owner could say that 
> if they really don't trust any of the contributors to conform to the 
> direction they have in mind for the component (that's not to discredit the 
> contributors - but that's the point of pre-commit review: to ensure it 
> conforms to the code owners vision for the component). 
> privledges
>  (yes, code owners aren't meant to be dictators - but they're ultimately the 
> final decider)


I disagree that this characterizes our conception of the role of code owner 
within the project, but there is some mitigating context. In my experience, we 
describe code owners as "reviewers of last resort", and their primary 
responsibility is to prevent review stagnation with their component (including 
from new/infrequent contributors whose patches might otherwise go unreviewed). 
The code owner is not the final decider in all cases, but can serve as a tie 
breaker when community consensus is unclear. That's an important role, because 
it ensures our ability to make forward progress, but is different in character 
from someone with overriding final authority. The code owners vision matters 
only slightly if the community consensus is for a different vision. There 
certainly are parts of LLVM that are developed by one person, and that person 
is the code owner, and thus excessive a lot of influence over the future 
direction of the component. Patches are often contributed without pre-commit 
review, in this case, and the code owner is often the most-skilled reviewer for 
any other patches as well. However, this state exists only at the pleasure of 
the rest of the community - we all see these patches on the commits list, and 
should more people become involved and request a more-inclusive pre-commit 
review cycle, that's what should happen. For components actively developed by 
many people, code owners have relatively minor privileges in this regard.

I suppose that we never wrote this down anywhere, but when I became code owner 
for the AA subsystem, we had an understanding that, because AA is so pervasive 
and subtle, even as code owner I would never commit anything (aside from 
reverts or similar) without pre-commit review. IMHO, this is the only 
responsible way to handle this subsystem. Not all subsystems are so risky, so 
there's appropriately a spectrum of development practices (some favoring 
velocity over stability), but I still view this as being more democratic than 
hierarchically authoritative.


Repository:
  rG LLVM Github Monorepo

CHANGES SINCE LAST ACTION
  https://reviews.llvm.org/D77683/new/

https://reviews.llvm.org/D77683



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