100 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
100 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# The libcontainer Maintainers' Guide
|
|
|
|
## Introduction
|
|
|
|
Dear maintainer. Thank you for investing the time and energy to help
|
|
make libcontainer as useful as possible. Maintaining a project is difficult,
|
|
sometimes unrewarding work. Sure, you will get to contribute cool
|
|
features to the project. But most of your time will be spent reviewing,
|
|
cleaning up, documenting, answering questions, justifying design
|
|
decisions - while everyone has all the fun! But remember - the quality
|
|
of the maintainers work is what distinguishes the good projects from the
|
|
great. So please be proud of your work, even the unglamourous parts,
|
|
and encourage a culture of appreciation and respect for *every* aspect
|
|
of improving the project - not just the hot new features.
|
|
|
|
This document is a manual for maintainers old and new. It explains what
|
|
is expected of maintainers, how they should work, and what tools are
|
|
available to them.
|
|
|
|
This is a living document - if you see something out of date or missing,
|
|
speak up!
|
|
|
|
## What are a maintainer's responsibility?
|
|
|
|
It is every maintainer's responsibility to:
|
|
|
|
* 1) Expose a clear roadmap for improving their component.
|
|
* 2) Deliver prompt feedback and decisions on pull requests.
|
|
* 3) Be available to anyone with questions, bug reports, criticism etc.
|
|
on their component. This includes IRC, GitHub requests and the mailing
|
|
list.
|
|
* 4) Make sure their component respects the philosophy, design and
|
|
roadmap of the project.
|
|
|
|
## How are decisions made?
|
|
|
|
Short answer: with pull requests to the libcontainer repository.
|
|
|
|
libcontainer is an open-source project with an open design philosophy. This
|
|
means that the repository is the source of truth for EVERY aspect of the
|
|
project, including its philosophy, design, roadmap and APIs. *If it's
|
|
part of the project, it's in the repo. It's in the repo, it's part of
|
|
the project.*
|
|
|
|
As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the
|
|
repository. An implementation change is a change to the source code. An
|
|
API change is a change to the API specification. A philosophy change is
|
|
a change to the philosophy manifesto. And so on.
|
|
|
|
All decisions affecting libcontainer, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:
|
|
|
|
* Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this.
|
|
|
|
* Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this.
|
|
|
|
* Step 3: Accept (`LGTM`) or refuse a pull request. The relevant maintainers do
|
|
this (see below "Who decides what?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
## Who decides what?
|
|
|
|
All decisions are pull requests, and the relevant maintainers make
|
|
decisions by accepting or refusing the pull request. Review and acceptance
|
|
by anyone is denoted by adding a comment in the pull request: `LGTM`.
|
|
However, only currently listed `MAINTAINERS` are counted towards the required
|
|
majority.
|
|
|
|
libcontainer follows the timeless, highly efficient and totally unfair system
|
|
known as [Benevolent dictator for life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life), with Michael Crosby in the role of BDFL.
|
|
This means that all decisions are made by default by Michael. Since making
|
|
every decision himself would be highly un-scalable, in practice decisions
|
|
are spread across multiple maintainers.
|
|
|
|
The relevant maintainers for a pull request can be worked out in two steps:
|
|
|
|
* Step 1: Determine the subdirectories affected by the pull request. This
|
|
might be `netlink/` and `security/`, or any other part of the repo.
|
|
|
|
* Step 2: Find the `MAINTAINERS` file which affects this directory. If the
|
|
directory itself does not have a `MAINTAINERS` file, work your way up
|
|
the repo hierarchy until you find one.
|
|
|
|
### I'm a maintainer, and I'm going on holiday
|
|
|
|
Please let your co-maintainers and other contributors know by raising a pull
|
|
request that comments out your `MAINTAINERS` file entry using a `#`.
|
|
|
|
### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too?
|
|
|
|
Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
|
|
made through a pull request.
|
|
|
|
### Who assigns maintainers?
|
|
|
|
Michael has final `LGTM` approval for all pull requests to `MAINTAINERS` files.
|
|
|
|
### How is this process changed?
|
|
|
|
Just like everything else: by making a pull request :)
|