HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A committer is an individual who is permitted to modify the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
of a software project, that will be used in the project's official releases. To contribute source code to most large software projects, one must make modifications and then "commit" those changes to a central
version control system In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...
, such as
Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...
(or
CVS CVS may refer to: Organizations * CVS Health, a US pharmacy chain ** CVS Pharmacy ** CVS Caremark, a prescription benefit management subsidiary * Council for Voluntary Service, England * Cable Video Store, former US pay-per-view service * CVS F ...
). In
open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
development, the committer role may be used to distinguish commit access, a specific type of responsibility, from other forms of contribution, such as triaging issues or organizing events. Typically, an author submits a
software patch A patch is a set of changes to a computer program or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, with such patches usually being called bugfixes or bug fixes. Patches ...
containing changes and a committer integrates the patch into the main code base of the project.


Commit bit

To have a "commit bit" on one's user account means that the user is permitted to contribute source code changes. This dates to the use of a literal
binary digit Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that t ...
to represent yes-or-no privileges in access control systems of legacy
version control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...
and
software system A software system is a system of intercommunicating components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate programs, configuration files, which are used to se ...
s, such as
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
. The commit bit represents the permission to contribute to the shared code of a
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
project. It can be resigned or may be removed due to inactivity in the project, as dormant committer accounts can represent security risks.


Common responsibilities

Project committers are usually the lead developers of a project and are the ones responsible for the majority of changes. They are seen as trusted, responsible and reliable members of the project's community. Relatedly, committers are usually responsible for the review of patches submitted by members of the community for inclusion into the software. After a successful review, usually consisting of conformance to coding standards and ensuring it does not introduce any new bugs, the committer will commit that specific patch on behalf of the patch submitter.


Becoming a committer

The process to becoming a committer can vary across projects, but in general, there are three common ways to do it. # Be one of the original developers # Be appointed by one of the original developers # Be successfully voted in by the community of committers Becoming a committer in an existing project often involves becoming active on both the
mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...
s as well as with supplying patches. After enough involvement, the other committers can then vote you in as a new committer. This normally happens through an
e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
vote. The XML-SOAP project hosted at Apache.org is an example of this process.http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/xml-soap-dev/200006.mbox/%3c852568F9.0079E946.00@d54mta04.raleigh.ibm.com%3e


References

{{reflist Free software culture and documents Version control