RFC 8: SVN Commit Management

Author:Stephan Meißl
Created:2011-05-04
Last Edit:2011-05-18
Status:ACCEPTED
Discussion:http://www.eoxserver.org/wiki/DiscussionRfc8

Overview

This RFC documents the EOxServer guidelines for SVN commit access and specifies some guidelines for SVN committers.

(Credit: Inspired by the MapServer SVN commit management guidelines at: http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-7.1.html)

Election to SVN Commit Access

Permission for SVN commit access shall be provided to new developers only if accepted by the EOxServer Project Steering Committee (PSC). 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. An e-mail to the dev mailing list is sufficient.

Removal of SVN commit access should be handled by the same procedure.

The new committer should have demonstrated commitment to EOxServer and knowledge of the EOxServer source code and processes to the committee’s satisfaction, usually by reporting tickets, submitting patches, and/or actively participating in the various EOxServer forums.

The new committer should also be prepared to support any new feature or changes that he/she commits to the EOxServer 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 dev mailing list so they can stay informed on policies, technical developments, and release preparation.

Committer Tracking

A list of all project committers will be kept in the main eoxserver directory (called COMMITTERS) 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 PSC will be appointed the SVN Administrator. That person is responsible for giving SVN commit access to folks, updating the COMMITTERS file, and other SVN related management. Initially Stephan Meißl will be the SVN Administrator.

SVN Commit Practices

The following are considered good SVN commit practices for the EOxServer project.

  • Use meaningful descriptions for SVN commit log entries.
  • Add a ticket reference like “(#1232)” at the end of SVN commit log entries when committing changes related to a ticket in Trac.
  • Include changeset revision numbers like “r7622” in tickets when discussing relevant changes to the codebase.
  • Changes should not be committed in stable branches without a corresponding ticket. Any change worth pushing into a stable version is worth a Trac ticket.
  • Never commit new features to a stable branch: only critical fixes. New features can only go in the main development trunk.
  • Only ticket defects should be committed to the code during pre-release code freeze.
  • Significant changes to the main development version should be discussed on the dev maling list before making them, and larger changes will require an RFC approved by the PSC.
  • Do not create new branches without the approval of the PSC. A Release manager designated under RFC 7: Release Guidelines is automatically granted permission to create a branch, as defined by their role described in RFC 7: Release Guidelines.
  • All source code in SVN should be in Unix text format as opposed to DOS text mode.
  • 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 work.
  • Include the standard EOxServer header in every new file and set the following SVN properties:
    • svn propset svn:keywords ‘Author Date Id Rev URL’ <new_file>
    • svn propset svn:eol-style native <new_file>

Voting History

Motion:Adopted on 2011-05-17 with +1 from Arndt Bonitz, Stephan Krause, Stephan Meißl, Milan Novacek, Martin Paces, Fabian Schindler

Traceability

Requirements:N/A
Tickets:N/A