An alternative way of appointing reviewers and maintainers

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Tue, Jun 03, 2025 at 11:47:41AM +0100, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 at 11:21, Richard Sandiford via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> > At the moment, all reviewers and maintainers have to be appointed by the
> > Steering Committee.  I wonder if we could add a second, more community-based
> > route: someone can be appointed as a reviewer or maintainer with the agreement
> > of a given number of people who already have an equal or greater remit.
> 
> Sounds like a good idea to me, with whatever details to be worked out
> (I'm fine with your strawman process proposal, or Richi's suggestion
> for more transparency, I don't have a strong opinion either way).
>
> This seems like letting the existing maintainers and the community
> manage the day-to-day running of the project, and only involve the SC
> to "make major decisions" (as the docs say they do).

Agreed. Maintainers already can approve new Write after Approval
accounts. This seems a natural extension. For more transparancy I
suggest the commit that updates the MAINTAINERS file adds one or more

Approved-By: <approver>

And we should also ask that of new Write after Approval developers.

Cheers,

Mark

> > It's already possible for reviewers or maintainers to defer to the
> > opinion of someone they trust and rubber-stamp that other person's
> > review or patch.  Having the ability to appoint the other person as a
> > co-reviewer or co-maintainer of that area is really just replacing
> > patch-by-patch trust with a more ongoing trust.
> >
> > If that seems a bit woolly, and if a more formally defined process
> > seems necessary, then how about this strawman:
> >
> > * Someone can be nominated to be a reviewer of an area by sending a
> >   private email to every reviewer and maintainer who covers a non-strict
> >   superset of that area.  The nomination is approved if it is supported
> >   by at least two such reviewers or maintainers and if there are no
> >   objections.  People would be given at least a week to respond.
> >
> > * The process would be the same for maintainers, with the same set of
> >   addressees, except that there must already be at least one maintainer
> >   for that area and, in addition to the previous requirements, all such
> >   maintainers must be in favour.
> >
> >   (So if the area is maintained by one person, the nomination would
> >   need the support of that maintainer and at least one reviewer of a
> >   wider area.  If the area is maintained by two of more people, they
> >   would all need to agree.)
> >
> > The idea with making it private is that it allows for a more honest
> > discussion.  But the convention could be to have a public discussion
> > instead, if that seems better.
> >
> > Like I say, this would just be a second, alternative route.  It would
> > still be possible to ask the SC instead.
> >
> > In case it sounds otherwise, I'm really not trying to pick a fight here.
> > I just don't remember this being discussed on-list for a long time,
> > so it seemed worth bringing up.  (Maybe it has been discussed at the
> > Cauldron -- not sure.)
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Richard