Packaging Roles and Responsibilities

There are four roles related to Spack Package repository Pull Requests (PRs):

  1. Package Contributors,

  2. Package Reviewers,

  3. Maintainers (Package Owners), and

  4. Committers.

One person can assume multiple roles (e.g., a Package Contributor may also be a Maintainer; a Package Reviewer may also be a Committer). This section defines and describes the responsibilities of each role.

Package Contributors

Contributors submit changes to packages through PRs Spack Package repository Pull Requests (PRs).

As a Contributor, you are expected to test your changes on at least one platform outside of Spack’s Continuous Integration (CI) checks.

Note

We also ask that you include the output from spack debug report from the platform you used to facilitate PR reviews.

Package Reviewers

Anyone can review a PR so we encourage Spack’s community members to review and comment on those involving software in which they have expertise and/or interest.

As a Package Reviewer, you are expected to assess changes in PRs to the best of your ability and knowledge with special consideration to the information contained in the Package Review Guide.

Maintainers (Package Owners)

Maintainers are individuals (technically GitHub accounts) who appear in a package’s Maintainers directive. These are people who have agreed to be notified of and given the opportunity to review changes to packages. They are, from a Spack package perspective, Code Owners of the package, whether or not they “own” or work on the software that the package builds.

As a Maintainer, you are expected, when available, to:

  • review PRs in a timely manner (reported in Committers) to confirm that the changes made to the package are reasonable;

  • confirm that packages successfully build on at least one platform; and

  • attempt to confirm that any updated or included tests pass.

See Successful builds for acceptable forms of build success confirmation.

Note

If at least one maintainer approves a PR -– and there are no objections from others -– then the PR can be merged by any of the Committers.

Committers

Committers are vetted individuals who are allowed to merge PRs into the develop branch.

As a Committer, you are expected to:

  • ensure at least one review is performed prior to merging (GitHub rules enforce this);

  • encourage at least one Package Maintainer (if any) to comment and/or review the PR;

  • allow Package Maintainers (if any) up to one week to comment or provide a review;

  • determine if the criteria defined in Package Review Guide are met; and

  • merge the reviewed PR at their discretion.

Note

If there are no Maintainers (Package Owners) or the Maintainers have not commented or reviewed the PR within the allotted time, you will need to conduct the review.

Tip

The following criteria must be met in order to become a Committer:

  • cannot be an anonymous account;

  • must come from a known and trustworthy organization;

  • demonstrated record of contribution to Spack;

  • have an account on the Spack Slack workspace;

  • be approved by the Onboarding subcommittee; and

  • (proposed) be known to at least 3 members of the core development team.