On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 4:47 PM Gregory Nutt <spudan...@gmail.com> wrote: > In the past, we talked about not all changes being equal and that > changes within some directories are more sensitive than changes to > others. We discussed the notion of an "owner" of each top level > directory that needed to approve any changes to those directories. > Nathan was the primary advocate for the concept. I think that it is > time that we re-consider this idea.
Just to clarify: I don't support that specific people should "own" a directory or section of code, but what I do support is the idea that certain areas are more critical and need more people to give an OK before merging changes that affect those areas; the individual committers are expected to "know what they don't know" and not weigh in on approving things they don't understand. There's the concept of an "obvious fix" that doesn't apply: Anyone who wants to fix typos, grammar, wrong/misleading comments, non-functional changes, etc., should be able to do so without requiring the same scrutiny as functional changes. Regarding what Justin said about Subversion: On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 6:43 PM Justin Mclean <jus...@classsoftware.com> wrote: > The only project I know that does something similar (successfully) is > subversion and it's by social convention. I happen to be on the Subversion PMC and AFAIK no one "owns" any section of anything; in fact, our Community Guide (a.k.a. "HACKING") has this to say: "We have a tradition of not marking files with the names of individual authors (i.e., we don't put lines like "Author: foo" or "@author foo" in a special position at the top of a source file). This is to discourage territoriality — even when a file has only one author, we want to make sure others feel free to make changes. People might be unnecessarily hesitant if someone appears to have staked a personal claim to the file." Again, you're expected to "know what you don't know" and it's on the honor system. Of course, since we (and our employers) all keep critical code in Subversion repositories, none of us wants to mess it up!! :-) So, bottom line: I support the idea that critical areas should require more review, but I don't support "owners" of files. Cheers, Nathan
