This doc outlines the responsibilities of contributor roles in Dapr. The Dapr project is subdivided into sub-projects under (predominantly, but not exclusively) runtime (dapr), components-contrib, CLI, quickstarts, docs and language-specific SDKs. Responsibilities for roles are scoped to these sub-projects (repos).
All roles are expected to follow to the Code of Conduct.
| Role | Responsibilities | Requirements | Defined by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contributor | Contribute source code, documentation or blog posts | At least one merged PR in one of the Dapr repositories. | GtiHub contributors listed per repository |
| Member | Active contributor in the community. Reviewer of PRs | Sponsored by two approvers or maintainers. Multiple contributions to the project. | Dapr GitHub org member |
| Approver | Approve accepting contributions | Highly experienced and active reviewer and contributor to a subproject. | CODEOWNERS, GitHub Team and repository write access in GitHub |
| Feature Maintainer | Set direction and priorities for a feature or a specialized area of project/repo | Demonstrated responsibility and excellent technical judgement in the area. | CODEOWNERS, GitHub Team and repository write access in GitHub |
| Maintainer | Set direction and priorities for a repository | Demonstrated responsibility and excellent technical judgement for the repository's code base. | CODEOWNERS, GitHub Team and repository ownership in GitHub |
| Administrator | Administers the GitHub Dapr org, credentials, and related infrastructure | Highly experienced Dapr maintainer | CODEOWNERS, GitHub Team and repo ownership in GitHub |
Note: The Steering & Technical Committee (STC) referred to in this document is described here
Everyone is welcome to contribute to Dapr. Contribution can take many forms, it could be contributing source code to the many repositories, updating documentation, writing blog posts, or helping the community by answering questions on Discord or other social channels.
New contributors should be welcomed to the community by existing members, helped with PR workflow, and directed to relevant documentation and communication channels.
Established community members are expected to demonstrate their adherence to the principles in this document, familiarity with project organization, roles, policies, procedures, conventions, etc., and technical and/or writing ability. Role-specific expectations, responsibilities, and requirements are enumerated below.
Members are continuously active contributors in the community. They can have issues and PRs assigned to them. Members are expected to participate in community discussions and remain active contributors to the community.
Defined by: Member of the Dapr GitHub organization
- Enabled two-factor authentication on their GitHub account
- Have made multiple contributions to the project or community. Contributions may include, but is not limited to:
- Authoring or reviewing PRs on GitHub
- Filing or commenting on issues on GitHub
- Contributing to sub-projects, or community discussions (e.g. meetings, chat, etc.)
- Joined the Discord server
- Have read the contributor guide
- Actively contributing to 1 or more sub-projects
- Sponsored by two approvers or maintainers (sponsors). Note the following requirements for sponsors:
- Sponsors must have close interactions with the prospective member - e.g. code/design/proposal review, coordinating on issues, etc
- Sponsors must be approvers or maintainers in at least one CODEOWNERS file in any repo in the Dapr org
- Open an
issue
against the
Dapr/community repo
- Ensure your sponsors are
@mentionedon the issue - Complete every item on the checklist (preview the current version of the template)
- Make sure that the list of contributions included is representative of your work on the project
- Ensure your sponsors are
- Have your sponsoring reviewers reply confirmation of sponsorship:
+1 - Once your sponsors have responded, your request will be reviewed by the Steering & Technical Committee (STC). Any member of the Steering & Technical Committee can review the requirements and add Members to the GitHub org
- Responsive to issues and PRs assigned to them
- Active owner of code contributed by them (unless ownership is explicitly transferred)
- Code is well tested
- Tests consistently pass
- Addresses bugs or issues discovered after code is accepted
- Members are encouraged to review and approve via the GitHub workflow. This review work, while not sufficient to merge a PR, does accrue toward the Member becoming an Approver. Merge approval and final review are performed by an Approver
- Members can be assigned to issues and PRs, and people can ask members for reviews with a
/cc @username
Note: members who frequently contribute code are expected to proactively perform code reviews and work towards becoming an approver for the sub-projects in which they are active. Acceptance of code contributions requires at least one approver in addition to the reviews by members.
Code approvers should review and approve code contributions, as well as help maintainers triage issues and do project management.
While code review is focused on code quality and correctness, approval is focused on holistic acceptance of a contribution including: backwards/forwards compatibility, adhering to API and conventions, performance and correctness issues, interactions with other sub-projects, etc.
Defined by: CODEOWNERS workflow.
Approver status can be scoped to a part of the codebase. For example, critical core components may have higher bar for becoming an approver.
The following apply to the part of the codebase for which one would be an approver in the CODEOWNERS files:
- Reviewer of the codebase for at least 1 month
- Reviewer for, or author of, at least 5 substantial PRs to the codebase, with the definition of substantial area to the maintainer's discretion (e.g. refactors/adds new functionality rather than one-line pulls)
- Nominated by a maintainer from the repository in which the nomination is applied to:
- With an approving vote of at least 2 maintainers from the repository maintainers. In the case of a repository with a solo maintainer, a single vote suffices
- With no objections from other repository maintainers for a period of one week
- Steering committee acts as the final resolution to any escalation
- Done through PR to update the
CODEOWNERS
The following apply to the part of the codebase for which one would be an approver in the CODEOWNERS files.
- Approver status may be a precondition to accepting large code contributions
- Demonstrate sound technical judgement (may be asked to step down by a maintainer if they lose confidence of the maintainers)
- Responsible for project quality control via code reviews
- Focus on holistic acceptance of contribution such as dependencies with other features, backwards / forwards compatibility, API and conventions, etc
- Expected to be responsive to review requests (inactivity for more than 1 month may result in suspension until active again)
- Mentor contributors and reviewers
- May approve code contributions for acceptance
- Inactivity for more than 3 months leads to a removal vote by maintainers and not an automatic removal
Feature-maintainers are the technical authority for a feature or specialized area of the project/repository in the Dapr org. They MUST have demonstrated both good judgement and responsibility towards the health of that space. Feature Maintainers can set technical direction and make or approve design decisions for their designated space.
Defined by: GitHub write permission in repository and entry in CODEOWNERS files.
The following apply to the area (ex: building block API/ Control plane service/ Component provider) for which one would be a feature-maintainer:
- Deep understanding of the technical goals and direction of the area.
- Deep understanding of the technical domain (specifically the language) of the area
- Sustained contributions to design and direction by doing all of:
- Authoring and reviewing proposals
- Initiating, contributing and resolving discussions (Discord discussions, GitHub issues, meetings)
- Identifying subtle or complex issues in designs and implementation PRs
- Directly contributed to the space through implementation and/or review
- Must have been active for 3 months or more for the given space
- Inactivity for more than 3 months leads to a removal vote by the repository maintainers and not an automatic removal.
New feature-maintainers can be added to the project by a super-majority (two-thirds / 66.66%) vote. Only the maintainers (not feature-maintainers) of the repository in which the nomination is applied have a binding vote, while maintainers from other repositories are on an informed basis via a separate email thread.
A potential feature-maintainer may be nominated by an existing maintainer (not feature-maintainers) from the repository in which the nomination is applied to. A vote is conducted in private between the current maintainers over the course of a one week voting period. At the end of the week, votes are counted, and a pull request is made on the repo adding the new feature-maintainer to the feature-maintainers.md file.
Feature-maintainers MUST remain active. Inactivity for more than 3 months leads to a removal vote by maintainers and not an automatic removal
A feature-maintainer may step down by submitting an issue stating their intent.
Former feature-maintainers of a repository must be mentioned in the repository's README.md file, containing their name and GitHub handle under a section called "Emeritus feature-maintainers".
- Workflow
- Distributed Scheduler
- Placement
- Actors
- PubSub
- Tracing
The following applies to the area(ex: building block API/ Control plane service/ Component provider) for which the feature-maintainer would be an owner:
- Make and approve technical design decisions for the area
- Set technical direction and priorities for the area.
- Define milestones and releases working along with the maintainers
- Decides on when PRs are merged to control the release scope
- Mentor and guide approvers and contributors of the area
- Escalate approver and maintainer workflow concerns. (For example responsiveness, availability, and general contributor community health) to the STC
- Ensure continued health of area:
- Adequate test coverage to confidently release
- Tests are passing reliably (not flaky) and are fixed when they fail.
- Work with other feature-maintainers & maintainers to maintain the project's overall health and success holistically.
- Membership tracked in feature-maintainer.md entry and scoped to a area.
- Must maintain components, review, and approve proposals for enhancing areas falling under the user area.
- Actively participate in issue triages and PR reviews
- Set milestone priorities for the areas working with the repo maintainers.
- Ensure a healthy process for discussion and decision making is in place
Maintainers are the technical authority for a repository in the Dapr org. They MUST have demonstrated both good judgement and responsibility towards the health of that repository. Maintainers MUST set technical direction and make or approve design decisions for their repository - either directly or through delegation of these responsibilities to approvers or feature maintainers.
Defined by: GitHub organization ownership, permissions and entry in CODEOWNERS
files.
The following apply to the repository for which one would be an owner:
- Deep understanding of the technical goals and direction of the subproject
- Deep understanding of the technical domain (specifically the language) of the subproject
- Sustained contributions to design and direction by doing all of:
- Authoring and reviewing proposals
- Initiating, contributing and resolving discussions (e.g. emails, GitHub issues, meetings)
- Identifying subtle or complex issues in designs and implementation PRs
- Directly contributed to the subproject through implementation and / or review
- Aligning with the overall project goals, specifications and design principles defined by the Technical & Steering Committee. Bringing general questions and requests to the discussions as part of specifications project
- Must have been active for 3 months or more for the given sub-project
- Inactivity for more than 3 months leads to a removal vote by other maintainers and not an automatic removal
New maintainers can be added to the project by a super-majority (two-thirds / 66.66%) vote. Only the maintainers of the repository in which the nomination is applied to have a binding vote, while maintainers from other repositories are on an informed basis via a separate email thread. A potential maintainer may be nominated by an existing maintainer from the repository in which the nomination is applied to. A vote is conducted in private between the current maintainers over the course of a one week voting period. At the end of the week, votes are counted and a pull request is made on the repo adding the new maintainer to the CODEOWNERS file.
Maintainers for new repositories can be nominated by any member of the steering committee and voted on in a steering committee meeting. Single maintainers of a repository can nominate a new maintainer and MUST inform the steering committee of their intention. A new maintainer can be approved if no objections have been raised in a period of one week.
A maintainer may step down by submitting an issue to the stating their intent.
Former maintainers of a repository must be mentioned in the repository's README.md file, containing their name and GitHub handle under a section called "Emeritus maintainers".
The following apply to the subproject(repos) for which one would be an owner:
- Make and approve technical design decisions for the subproject
- Set technical direction and priorities for the subproject
- Define milestones and releases
- Decides on when PRs are merged to control the release scope
- Mentor and guide approvers and contributors to the subproject
- Escalate approver and maintainer workflow concerns (i.e. responsiveness, availability, and general contributor community health) to the TC
- Ensure continued health of subproject:
- Adequate test coverage to confidently release
- Tests are passing reliably (i.e. not flaky) and are fixed when they fail
- Ensure a healthy process for discussion and decision making is in place
- Work with other maintainers to maintain the project's overall health and success holistically
Maintainers MUST remain active. If they are unresponsive for >3 months, a maintainer might start a removal voting process, requiring a super-majority of the other maintainers of the given repository or STC to approve removal.
An administrator is a highly experienced Dapr maintainer who has been granted additional permissions to administer the GitHub Dapr org, credentials, and CI/CD infrastructure.
Administrators have access to credentials equivalent to members of the steering and technical commitee (STC). Read Administrator Role for more information.
An administrator must be an active Dapr maintainer for a longer time and has deep understanding of the technologies used in Dapr and the CI/CD infrastructure.
- Administer the GitHub Dapr org and related CI/CD infrastructure.
- Perform pre-approved routine maintenance duties and ad-hoc tasks delegated by the STC without making isolated decisions.