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 w ...

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 in ...

(or CVS). 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 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 ta ...

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 systems, such as BSD. The commit bit represents the permission to contribute to the shared code of a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

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 lists 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