Commit access
Table of contents
Overview
First and foremost, commit access is not required for contributing to Carbon! Anyone can send a pull request with a change to Carbon. Very few parts of our process require commit access, and most development activity is exactly the same for folks with or without. This is an important feature of our GitHub workflow for us, and one we plan to keep.
The main thing commit access allows is for developers to merge PRs into the main carbon-lang repository. They still need review, and often a reviewer with commit access handles the merge. It also gives the ability to approve and merge changes.
Getting commit access can help ease the development process; for contributors who don’t feel comfortable doing reviews, it can still ease the review process for their own PRs. It allows authors to automatically get GitHub Action results and merge their own PRs, including after resolving conflicts or fixing trivial PR comments post-approval.
Developers with commit access are expected to make reasonable choices about when to approve or merge PRs for others. Generally, the change either needs to be trivially understood without context on the code in question (such as a cleanup or typo fix), or the developer should have some context on the code in question. If in doubt, feel free to review but leave approving or merging for someone else.
Similarly, developers with commit access are expected to make reasonable choices about what changes to make to their own PRs without asking for another round of review prior to merge, even after approval. And again, if in doubt, ask for review.
Getting access
Contributors can request commit access based on their commit history. We want to make sure that developers with commit access are reasonably familiar with the style and structure of the codebase. Access will typically be granted when developers have contributed several PRs and are expecting to continue making more.
After a few non-trivial PRs are merged, contributors can ask a reviewer to nominate them for commit access if they plan to keep contributing. Reviewers can also directly suggest and nominate someone. Nominations need to be approved by at least one lead.
When approved, an invitation will be sent to join the Commit access team on GitHub. The invitation should cause a notification from GitHub, but it’s also possible to go to the invitation link directly. Access is granted when the invitation is accepted.
Removing access
We’ll periodically remove commit access from contributors who have been idle for over 6 months. We’ll use a combination of sources to determine what “idle” means, including whether a developer has been either sending or reviewing PRs. Developers can ask for commit access to be restored if they plan to start contributing again or come back from a break. Any relevant past contributions will still apply and allow it to be restored trivially.
For example, for jonmeow, GitHub searches (defaulting to PRs for convenience, but other types are included):