RFC ? : PostGIS Committer Guidelines

Version: 1.0

Status: draft

Author: Regina Obe

Purpose

To formalize source commit source tree access, and specify some guidelines for source committers and patch submitters.

Election to Commit Access

Permission for commit source tree access shall be provided to new developers only if accepted by the PostGIS Project Steering Committee. A proposal should be written to the PSC for new committers and voted on normally. It is not necessary to write an RFC document for these votes, a proposal to postgis-dev is sufficient.

Removal of commit access should be handled by the same process.

The new committer should have demonstrated commitment to PostGIS and knowledge of the PostGIS source code and processes to the committee's satisfaction, usually by reporting bugs, submitting patches, and/or actively participating in the PostGIS mailing list(s).

The new committer should also be prepared to support any new feature or changes that he/she commits to the PostGIS source tree in future releases, or to find someone to which to delegate responsibility for them if he/she stops being available to support the portions of code that he/she is responsible for.

All committers should also be a member of the postgis-dev mailing list so they can stay informed on policies, technical developments and release preparation.

New commiters are responsible for having read, and understood this document.

Committer Tracking

A list of all project committers will be kept in the main postgis directory in a file called (CREDITS) listing for each SVN committer:

• Userid: the id that will appear in the SVN logs for this person.
• Full name: the users actual name.
• Email address: A current email address at which the committer can be reached. It may be altered in normal ways to make it harder to auto-harvest.
• A brief indication of areas of responsibility.

SVN Administrator

One member of the Project Steering Committee will be designated the SVN Administrator. That person will be responsible for giving SVN commit access to folks, updating the COMMITERS file, and other SVN related management. That person will need login access on the SVN server of course.

Initially Paul Ramsey will be the SVN Administrator.

SVN Commit Practices

The following are considered good source commit practices for the PostGIS project.

• Use meaningful descriptions for commit log entries.
• Add a bug reference like "(#1232)" at the end of SVN commit log entries when committing changes related to a ticket in Trac. The '#' character enables Trac to create a hyperlink from the changeset to the mentionned ticket.
• Add a note HISTORY to the commit log if this is a major feature that should be noted in the NEWS version release and credits
• After commiting changes related to a ticket in Trac, write the tree and revision in which it was fixed in the ticket description. Such as "Fixed in trunk (r12345) and in branches/1.7 (r12346)". The 'r' character enables Trac to create a hyperlink from the ticket to the changeset.
• Changes should not be committed in stable branches without a corresponding bug id. Any change worth pushing into the stable version is worth a bug entry.
• Never commit new features to a stable branch without permission of the PSC or release manager. Normally only fixes should go into stable branches.
• New features go in the main development trunk.
• Only bug fixes should be committed to the code during pre-release code freeze, without permission from the PSC or release manager.
• Significant changes to the main development version should be discussed on the postgis-dev list before you make them, and larger changes will require an RFC approved by the PSC.
• Do not create new branches (except for spike branches) without the approval of the PSC. Release managers are assumed to have permission to create a branch.
• spike branche (htose in the spike/username area are to be used for experimentation of for major code refactorings that will destabilize the trunk. After

such experimentation is stable, this can then be merged into the trunk after approval from PSC members.

• All source code in SVN should be in Unix text format as opposed to DOS text mode.
• C code should follow our designated A-style format and astyle should be applied before commit
• When committing new features or significant changes to existing source code, the committer should take reasonable measures to insure that the source code continues to build and work on the most commonly supported platforms (currently Linux and Windows), either by testing on those platforms directly, running Buildbot tests, or by getting help from other developers working on those platforms. If new files or library dependencies are added, then the configure.in, Makefile.in, Makefile.vc and related documentations should be kept up to date.
• In the event of buildbot failure notice, the person who caused the break must fix the break before working on anything else