99 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
99 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
# The Docker Maintainer manual
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## Introduction
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Dear maintainer. Thank you for investing the time and energy to help
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make Docker as useful as possible. Maintaining a project is difficult,
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sometimes unrewarding work. Sure, you will get to contribute cool
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features to the project. But most of your time will be spent reviewing,
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cleaning up, documenting, answering questions, justifying design
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decisions - while everyone has all the fun! But remember - the quality
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of the maintainers work is what distinguishes the good projects from the
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great. So please be proud of your work, even the unglamourous parts,
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and encourage a culture of appreciation and respect for *every* aspect
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of improving the project - not just the hot new features.
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This document is a manual for maintainers old and new. It explains what
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is expected of maintainers, how they should work, and what tools are
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available to them.
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This is a living document - if you see something out of date or missing,
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speak up!
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## What are a maintainer's responsibility?
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It is every maintainer's responsibility to:
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* 1) Expose a clear roadmap for improving their component.
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* 2) Deliver prompt feedback and decisions on pull requests.
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* 3) Be available to anyone with questions, bug reports, criticism etc.
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on their component. This includes IRC, GitHub requests and the mailing
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list.
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* 4) Make sure their component respects the philosophy, design and
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roadmap of the project.
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## How are decisions made?
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Short answer: with pull requests to the docker repository.
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Docker is an open-source project with an open design philosophy. This
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means that the repository is the source of truth for EVERY aspect of the
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project, including its philosophy, design, roadmap and APIs. *If it's
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part of the project, it's in the repo. It's in the repo, it's part of
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the project.*
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As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the
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repository. An implementation change is a change to the source code. An
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API change is a change to the API specification. A philosophy change is
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a change to the philosophy manifesto. And so on.
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All decisions affecting docker, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:
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* Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this.
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* Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this.
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* Step 3: Accept or refuse a pull request. The relevant maintainer does this (see below "Who decides what?")
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## Who decides what?
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So all decisions are pull requests, and the relevant maintainer makes
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the decision by accepting or refusing the pull request. But how do we
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identify the relevant maintainer for a given pull request?
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Docker follows the timeless, highly efficient and totally unfair system
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known as [Benevolent dictator for
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life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life), with
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yours truly, Solomon Hykes, in the role of BDFL. This means that all
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decisions are made by default by Solomon. Since making every decision
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myself would be highly un-scalable, in practice decisions are spread
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across multiple maintainers.
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The relevant maintainer for a pull request is assigned in 3 steps:
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* Step 1: Determine the subdirectory affected by the pull request. This
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might be `src/registry`, `docs/source/api`, or any other part of the repo.
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* Step 2: Find the `MAINTAINERS` file which affects this directory. If the
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directory itself does not have a `MAINTAINERS` file, work your way up
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the repo hierarchy until you find one.
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* Step 3: The first maintainer listed is the primary maintainer. The
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pull request is assigned to him. He may assign it to other listed
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maintainers, at his discretion.
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### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too?
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Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
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made through a pull request.
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### Who assigns maintainers?
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Solomon.
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### How is this process changed?
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Just like everything else: by making a pull request :)
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