Membership

This team discusses membership in the compiler team. There are currently two levels of membership:

  • members: regular contributors with r+ rights, bot privileges, and access to infrastructure
  • maintainers: members who have committed themselves to invest in the quality of the compiler and health of the compiler team

The path to membership

People who are looking to contribute to the compiler typically start in one of two ways. They may tackle “one off” issues, or they may get involved in some kind of existing working group. They don’t know much about the compiler yet and have no particular privileges. They are assigned to issues using the triagebot and (typically) work with a mentor or mentoring instructions.

Compiler team member

Once an individual has been contributing regularly for some time, they can be promoted to the level of a compiler team member (see the section on how decisions are made below). This title indicates that they are someone who contributes regularly.

It is hard to define the precise conditions when such a promotion is appropriate. Being promoted to member is not just a function of checking various boxes. But the general sense is that someone is ready when they have demonstrated three things:

  • “Staying power” – the person should be contributing on a regular basis in some way. This might for example mean that they have completed a few projects.
  • “Independence and familiarity” – they should be acting somewhat independently when taking on tasks, at least within the scope of the working group. They should plausibly be able to mentor others on simple PRs.
  • “Cordiality” – compiler team members will be part of the Rust organization and are held to a higher standard with respect to the Code of Conduct. They should not only obey the letter of the CoC but also its spirit.

Being promoted to member implies a number of privileges:

  • Members have r+ (approve a pull request) privileges and can do reviews (they are expected to use those powers appropriately, as discussed previously). They also have access to control perf/rustc-timer and other similar bots. See the documentation for bors and r+ here.

    Tip: some baseline rules around bors permissions are: don’t do a try build unless you have done a check for malicious code first and don’t r+ unless you are reasonably confident that you can effectively review the code in question.

  • Compiler team members are members of the Rust organization so they can modify labels and be assigned to issues.

  • Members become a part of the rust-lang/compiler team on GitHub, so that they receive pings when people are looking to address the team as a whole.

  • Members are listed on the rust-lang.org web page.

It also implies some obligations (in some cases, optional obligations):

  • Members will be asked if they wish to be added to the reviewer rotation.
  • Members may take part in various other [maintainer activities] to help the team.
  • Members are held to a higher standard than ordinary folk when it comes to the Code of Conduct.

What it means to be a compiler member

Once you’re a member of the compiler team, a number of events will happen:

  • You will gain access to a private Zulip stream, where internal discussions happen or ideas in very draft state are shared. Come and say hello to your new team members!

  • You will be subscribed and gain write access to a number of Github repositories. Check this GitHub page to see which repositories you have now access to. Some of them are pretty quiet or obsolete, so don’t worry about all of them.

    Tip: Github automatically adds you as subscriber to every repo you get write permission too. You can disable this in the settings (here).

  • You will also be subscribed to the all@rust-lang.org mailing list. See this file to check how subscriptions to mailing lists work. It’s a very low-volume mailing list (maybe a few emails per year), it’s a way to communicate things to all contributors. We will not send you spam from this address.

Maintainers

After being a compiler team member for a year, members can request or be asked to become a compiler team maintainer. This implies that they are not only a regular contributor, but are actively helping to shape the direction of the team or some part of the compiler (or multiple parts).

  • Compiler team maintainers are expected to participate in at least one [maintenance activities].
  • Compiler team maintainers are identified with the “Maintainer” role on the rust-lang website.

How promotion decisions are made

After an individual has been contributing to the compiler for a while, they may be nominated by an existing compiler team member or they may ask the compiler team leads if their contribution history is sufficient for team membership.

The compiler team leads will check with the rest of the compiler team to see if there are concerns with extending a membership invitation to the individual and after a week (barring no objections), an invitation will be extended.

If the invitation is accepted by the individual, the compiler team leads will update the team repository to reflect their new role.

Not just code

It is worth emphasizing that becoming a member of the compiler team does not necessarily imply writing PRs. There are a wide variety of tasks that need to be done to support the compiler and which should make one eligible for membership. Such tasks would include organizing meetings, participating in meetings, bisecting and triaging issues, writing documentation, working on the rustc-dev-guide. The most important criterion for elevation to compiler team member, in particular, is regular and consistent participation. The most important criterion for elevation to maintainer is actively shaping the direction of the team or compiler.

Alumni status

If at any time a compiler team member or maintainer wishes to take a break from participating, they can opt to put themselves into alumni status. When in alumni status, they will be removed from Github aliases and the like, so that they need not be bothered with pings and messages. They will also not have r+ privileges. Alumni members will however still remain members of the GitHub org overall.

People in alumni status can ask to return to “active” status at any time. This request would ordinarily be granted automatically barring extraordinary circumstances.

People in alumni status are still members of the team at the level they previously attained and they may publicly indicate that, though they should indicate the time period for which they were active as well.

Entering or leaving the Maintainer role

After a compiler team member has committed to actively maintaining the compiler by becoming a Maintainer, they may wish to take a break from these ongoing responsibilities either temporarily or indefinitely. In either case, the Maintainer can let the compiler team leads know or open a PR themselves to the team repo, removing themselves from the Maintainer marker team and placing themselves in the alumni list.

In the future, if the former Maintainer would like to resume maintenance duties, they can request re-instatement from the compiler team leads. This request would ordinarily be granted automatically barring extraordinary circumstances.

Compiler team alumni

Likewise, if any member of the compiler team would like to take an extended break from contribution and interaction with the team, they can let the compiler team leads know or open a PR themselves to the team repo, moving themselves to alumni status.

If an alumni member would like to resume compiler team membership in the future, they can request re-instatement from the compiler team leads and this will normally be granted.

Automatic alumni status after 6 months of inactivity

If a member or maintainer has been inactive in the compiler for 6 months, then we will ask them if they would like to go to alumni status. If they respond yes or do not respond, they can be placed on alumni status. If they would prefer to remain active, that is also fine, but they will get asked again periodically if they continue to be inactive.