maintainers.rst (3959B)
1 .. _maintainers: 2 3 The Role of Maintainers 4 ======================= 5 6 Maintainers are a critical part of the project's contributor ecosystem. 7 They come from a wide range of backgrounds from unpaid hobbyists 8 working in their spare time to employees who work on the project as 9 part of their job. Maintainer activities include: 10 11 - reviewing patches and suggesting changes 12 - collecting patches and preparing pull requests 13 - tending to the long term health of their area 14 - participating in other project activities 15 16 They are also human and subject to the same pressures as everyone else 17 including overload and burnout. Like everyone else they are subject 18 to project's :ref:`code_of_conduct` and should also be exemplars of 19 excellent community collaborators. 20 21 The MAINTAINERS file 22 -------------------- 23 24 The `MAINTAINERS 25 <https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/blob/master/MAINTAINERS>`__ 26 file contains the canonical list of who is a maintainer. The file 27 is machine readable so an appropriately configured git (see 28 :ref:`cc_the_relevant_maintainer`) can automatically Cc them on 29 patches that touch their area of code. 30 31 The file also describes the status of the area of code to give an idea 32 of how actively that section is maintained. 33 34 .. list-table:: Meaning of support status in MAINTAINERS 35 :widths: 25 75 36 :header-rows: 1 37 38 * - Status 39 - Meaning 40 * - Supported 41 - Someone is actually paid to look after this. 42 * - Maintained 43 - Someone actually looks after it. 44 * - Odd Fixes 45 - It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do 46 much other than throw the odd patch in. 47 * - Orphan 48 - No current maintainer. 49 * - Obsolete 50 - Old obsolete code, should use something else. 51 52 Please bear in mind that even if someone is paid to support something 53 it does not mean they are paid to support you. This is open source and 54 the code comes with no warranty and the project makes no guarantees 55 about dealing with bugs or features requests. 56 57 58 59 Becoming a reviewer 60 ------------------- 61 62 Most maintainers start by becoming subsystem reviewers. While anyone 63 is welcome to review code on the mailing list getting added to the 64 MAINTAINERS file with a line like:: 65 66 R: Random Hacker <rhacker@example.com> 67 68 marks you as a 'designated reviewer' - expected to provide regular 69 spontaneous feedback. This will ensure that patches touching a given 70 subsystem will automatically be CC'd to you. 71 72 Becoming a maintainer 73 --------------------- 74 75 Maintainers are volunteers who put themselves forward or have been 76 asked by others to keep an eye on an area of code. They have generally 77 demonstrated to the community, usually via contributions and code 78 reviews, that they have a good understanding of the subsystem. They 79 are also trusted to make a positive contribution to the project and 80 work well with the other contributors. 81 82 The process is simple - simply send a patch to the list that updates 83 the ``MAINTAINERS`` file. Sometimes this is done as part of a larger 84 series when a new sub-system is being added to the code base. This can 85 also be done by a retiring maintainer who nominates their replacement 86 after discussion with other contributors. 87 88 Once the patch is reviewed and merged the only other step is to make 89 sure your GPG key is signed. 90 91 .. _maintainer_keys: 92 93 Maintainer GPG Keys 94 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 95 96 GPG is used to sign pull requests so they can be identified as really 97 coming from the maintainer. If your key is not already signed by 98 members of the QEMU community, you should make arrangements to attend 99 a `KeySigningParty <https://wiki.qemu.org/KeySigningParty>`__ (for 100 example at KVM Forum) or make alternative arrangements to have your 101 key signed by an attendee. Key signing requires meeting another 102 community member **in person** [#]_ so please make appropriate 103 arrangements. 104 105 .. [#] In recent pandemic times we have had to exercise some 106 flexibility here. Maintainers still need to sign their pull 107 requests though.