Fuchsia contributor roles

Overview

This document defines the roles associated with contributing to the Fuchsia project.

Principles

Roles within the Fuchsia project seek to embody the following principles:

  • Transparency. We are transparent and open about roles and requirements.
  • Inclusivity. Fuchsia lets anyone contribute to the project, regardless of their employer.We believe contributions from a diverse, open-source community are critical to improving Fuchsia.
  • Responsibility. Roles and privileges can be revoked if a person no longer meets the requirements.

Roles

The following are the contributor roles associated with the Fuchsia project:

Member

Anyone who contributes to the project by providing patches to code or documentation, and agrees to the Google Developers' Contributor License Agreement.

Responsibilities

Members are responsible for acting in accordance with the Fuchsia Code of Conduct.

Become a Member

To become a Member you must do the following:

Committer

A Committer is a person who has write access to the Fuchsia repository. A Committer can submit their own Gerrit changes or Gerrit changes from any other member.

A Committer is not just someone who can make changes, but also someone who demonstrated the ability to collaborate effectively with other Members of the Fuchsia community. Example collaboration activities include but are not limited to:

  • Seeking out the most knowledgeable people to review their code changes.
  • Contributing high-quality, well-tested code.
  • Fixing bugs in code or tests.

Members can become Committers with different kinds of contributions. For instance, those working on documentation or toolchain can meet the requirements to become Committers by contributing high-quality documentation or configuration changes, which would not meet the “traditional” bar for well-tested code.

In order to submit Gerrit changes, Committers need to either be Owners of the affected files or receive approval from an Owner of the affected files.

Responsibilities

Committers are responsible for the following:

  • Ensuring that the code submitted to Fuchsia by Committers is tested according to the Testability Rubrics.
  • Ensuring that the code submitted to Fuchsia by Committers follows testing best practices.

Become a Committer

To become a Committer you must do the following:

  • Contribute 10 non-trivial patches to the project, demonstrating the ability to write high-quality, well-tested code.
  • Be nominated by a current Committer who has reviewed your code.
  • Be supported by two other Committers who have reviewed your code.
  • Ensure that your nomination is not blocked by any Committer.

A current Committer nominates you by sending email to committers@fuchsia.dev containing the following information. Please do not CC the nominee on the nomination email.

  • Your first and last name.
  • Your email address.
  • An explanation of why you should be a Committer.
  • Embedded list of links to revisions (about top 10) containing your patches.

Two other Committers need to second your nomination. If no one objects in 5 working days (U.S.), you're a Committer. If anyone objects or wants more information, the Committers discuss and usually come to a consensus (within the 5 working days). If issues can't be resolved, there's a vote among current Committers.

That's it! There is no further action you need to take on your part. The Committers will get back to you once they make a decision.

In the worst case, this can drag out for two weeks. Keep writing patches! Even in the rare cases where a nomination fails, the objection is usually something easy to address like "more patches" or "not enough people are familiar with this person's work."

Once you get approval from the existing Committers, a Fuchsia Community Manager will add you to committers@fuchsia.dev and reach out with some additional information on submitting contributions as an external contributor.

Try job access

If you are contributing patches but not (yet) a Committer, you may wish to be able to run jobs on the try servers directly rather than asking a Committer or reviewer to do so for you.

The process to obtain try job access is the following:

  • Ask a Committer you're working with (a frequent reviewer, for example) to send email to committers@fuchsia.dev nominating you for try job access.
  • You must provide an email address and at least a brief explanation of why you'd like access.
  • It is helpful to provide a name and company affiliation (if any) as well.
  • It is very helpful to have already had some patches landed, but is not absolutely necessary.
  • If no one objects within two (U.S.) working days, you will be approved for access. It may take an additional few days for the grant to propagate to all of the systems.

Owner

An Owner is responsible for files or directories within the Fuchsia project and has comprehensive knowledge of the code in that subtree. Owners are listed in OWNERS files. For directories or files that are outside of an Owner's responsibility, that Owner has the same privileges as a Committer.

Committers are encouraged to keep OWNERS files up to date.

Responsibilities

In addition to the responsibilities of a Committer and Member, Owners are responsible for the following:

  • Nominating other Owners.
  • Approving or removing other Owners.
  • Provide high-quality reviews and design feedback.
  • Approve changes for code in their subtree.

Become an Owner

To become an Owner you must do the following:

  • Be a Committer.
  • Submit a substantial number of non-trivial changes to the affected subtree.
  • Provide high-quality reviews and code design feedback.
  • Provide code reviews in a timely manner.
  • Self-nominate or be nominated by another Committer.
    • To self-nominate, submit a Gerrit change that adds yourself to the OWNERS file of your desired repository. Current Owners will evaluate your change and either accept or reject your request.

Global Approver

A Global Approver is a member of the owners-override@fuchsia.dev group. A Global Approver can invoke the Owners-override bit in Gerrit, which waives OWNERS requirements for a change.

While Global Approvers are empowered to provide an Owners-override +1 to large-scale changes, Global Approvers are not expected to have comprehensive knowledge of the entire Fuchsia codebase. It is expected that global approval will be used primarily in cases where the changes systematic, largely mechanical, and impacts a large fraction of the codebase. Global approval may also be appropriate in cases where an urgent change is needed to stabilize the tree, such a CL to disable a test or a complex revert that cannot be approved automatically.

Currently, members of Fuchsia Engineering Council are global approvers, as well as a small number of reviewers to cover timezones with no FEC member. Committers that encounter cases where existing code owners are can't provide review coverage are encouraged to first send a change to update the local OWNERS file, or to add a top-level, per-file rule to cover a certain type of file, like **/BUILD.gn or **/*.md. For cases where this proves insufficient, committers should send email to owners-override@fuchsia.dev to discuss the issue.

Responsibilities

In addition to the responsibilities of a Member, Committer, and Owner, Global Approvers are responsible for the following:

  • Approving large scale changes within the Fuchsia codebase with an Owners-override +1 in Gerrit.
  • Providing timely reviews for large scale changes.

Code review actions

The types of code review actions you can provide depend on your role within the Fuchsia project.

Initiate a CQ Dry Run

A CQ Dry Run runs your change against the available tests in the Commit Queue. Committers, Owners, and Global Approvers can initiate a CQ Dry Run.

Score code reviews

Code Review

After you request a code review, reviewers can score your change.

Reviewers can label your change with a score of -2, -1, 0, +1, or +2. For more information on review label definitions, see Gerrit Code Review - Review Labels.

Committers, Owners, and Global Approvers can score code reviews but only a Global Approver or repository Owner can provide a +2.

Submit approved changes

You need a Code Review Label +2 to submit your change. A Code-Review Label +2 score can only be applied by a repository Owner or Global Approver.

When a change is submitted, the change is moved to the Commit Queue (CQ). The Commit Queue verifies, commits, and merges changes to the master branch.

Role matrix

This table summarizes the actions that each Fuchsia contributor role can perform.

Role Create Change Code-Review another Committer’s change Provide Code-Review +2 Provide CQ+1 (dry run of CQ) Submit Approved Change to CQ Add or remove Owners
Member Yes No No No No No
Committer Yes Yes No Yes Yes No
Owner (outside owned subtree) Yes Yes No Yes Yes No
Owner (in own subtree) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Global Approver Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Life of a change

The following diagram depicts the high-level stages of what happens to a change after its pushed to Gerrit.

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Specialized roles

Areas within the Fuchsia repository may have their own unique requirements, defining their own sets of roles and responsibilities, in addition to the ones detailed above.

API Reviewer

An API Reviewer is accountable for the quality and long-term health of the Fuchsia API surface . API Reviewers collectively form the API Council.

Any change that modifies the Fuchsia API Surface must receive an API-Review+1. from a member of API Council in addition to the usual Code-Review+2.

For more details about the responsibilities of an API Reviewer and how the API Council operates, see the API Council Charter.

API Reviewer membership

To become an API Reviewer you must do the following:

  • Be a Committer.
  • Demonstrate good judgement about the quality and long-term health of APIs.
  • Be appointed by the functional area of the Fuchsia project, as per the API Council Charter.

Eng Council member

The Fuchsia Eng Council is a small group of senior technical leaders responsible for providing a coherent technical vision for Fuchsia. The Eng Council largely operates by delegation and ratification, communicating engineering standards, values, and objectives throughout the community and then reviewing and ratifying concrete engineering proposals from project contributors.

Eng Council membership

There is no predetermined number of people on the Eng Council. However, in order to provide a coherent technical vision, the council has a small number of members. Eng Council members are appointed by the governing authority for the project. For more information, see Membership in the Fuchsia Eng Council Charter.

Revoking Privileges

When contributors no longer meet requirements, their role and corresponding privileges can be revoked.

Scenarios

Example scenarios for having privileges revoked include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Not acting in accordance with the Fuchsia Code of Conduct.
  • Committers repeatedly ignoring testability best-practices in their code reviews.
  • Owners discouraging people from requesting code reviews.
  • Owners being unresponsive to review requests.

Process

The process for revoking an individual’s role within the Fuchsia project involves the following steps:

  • An Owner makes a recommendation to community-managers@fuchsia.dev to revoke someone’s role, specifying the rationale. Revoking an Owner role needs to be approved by an Owner in the same subtree or above.
    • Ownership is often revoked when an Owner is no longer actively contributing to their associated files or directories.

Revoking a Committer role should be a rare action and requires approval by the governance authority. Community managers should be involved in the process of revoking the Committer role.

Frequently asked questions

As a Fuchsia Member, you might have the following questions about requesting a code review:

  • Who can provide a Code Review +1?
    • All Committers, Owners, and Global Approvers. Code Review +1 means “Looks Good To Me” but a +1 alone doesn’t allow for submission. Someone else has to approve the change with a +2. For more information on review label definitions see, Gerrit Code Review - Review Labels.
  • Can specific portions of the Fuchsia source code have different requirements?
  • Do I need API-Review +1?
    • Changes affecting the Fuchsia API surface require API-Review +1, and the code review tool will only show the API-Review flag when it is needed.