Subject: [bug#61894] [PATCH RFC] Team approval for patches

From: Christopher Baines <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:15:26 +0000

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

> Currently teams are described mostly as pools of people who can mentor
> contributors in a particular area and who can review patches in that
> area.  My proposal is to give teams formal approval power over changes
> to code in their area.
>
> This is sorta happening already, but informally: if a non-committer
> sends a patch, someone from the team eventually “approves” it by pushing
> it.  Within a team, the situation is different: people usually discuss
> changes, and the submitter (also committer) eventually pushes them;
> sometimes, the submitter pushes changes without getting approval (or
> feedback) from others on the team.
>
> With the proposed policy, members of a team would also have to review
> and approve each other’s work.  Formal approval means getting an
> explicit “LGTM” (or similar) from at least one other team member.
>
> This is similar to the review thresholds found on GitLab & co., where
> project admins can specify a minimum number of approvals required before
> a change is marked as ready.  I think it avoids the unavoidable
> misunderstandings that can arise in a growing group and help pacify
> day-to-day collaboration.

I guess I'm still a team sceptic, I think the idea is interesting and I
have added myself as a member of some teams. But the main impact on me
so far is that I've just been getting some unwanted personal email,
messages that previously wouldn't have landed in my inbox have been
doing so.

Regarding this change specifically though, I'm unclear how it would
impact the things I push for others. I pushed some patches today, would
this mean that I'd have to look at what team/teams are involved
(according to /etc/teams.scm.in) for each commit/series, and then either
continue if I'm a member of that team, or skip it if I'm not?

If I'm going to not be pushing stuff I would have previously pushed
because I'm not in the relevant teams, maybe I should just add myself to
every team? I guess this is not a serious question, but I'm more making
the point that if teams become a formal part of patch review, then some
formalities over membership of a team is probably a prerequsite.

As a point of clarification, if a patch or series touches files that
fall within the scope of several teams, am I correct in saying that this
change would require approval from all teams?

Thanks,

Chris