Eclipse Development Process 2014

One of my tasks for this quarter is to deliver a draft of an update to the Eclipse Development Process (EDP) to the Eclipse Architecture Council for their review.

The process that we follow is to open bugs against Community/Architecture Council (prefixed with [EDP]), discuss them, and then incorporate the discussion into the new version of the EDP.

There are currently 19 open bugs, including Bug 367236 which is the “master” bug for this particular iteration. As you can tell from the title, “Updates to the EDP for 2014”, I expect that the Architecture Council-reviewed document will be presented to the Eclipse Board of Directors for their approval for implementation in early 2014. All of the EDP bugs that we intend to address with this iteration have been set as blockers on the “master” bug.

With this iteration, the focus in on simplifying the process and the document. One thing that I expect to include is a reduction in the number of types of reviews (Bug 325004), and considerations for social coding at Eclipse (Bug 415636). There are a few housekeeping items.

While I think it’s an interesting idea, I don’t think that we’ll get to Mickael’s suggestion on Twitter:

With the rise of #Git at @EclipseFdn , I think all references to the work "committer" should be replaced by "reviewer". (cc @waynebeaton )

— Mickael Istria (@mickaelistria) August 26, 2013

The word “Committer” is way too baked into everything that we do, including the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws. Still… it’s probably worth opening a bug.

There has been enough discussion on these bugs to start drafting the changes. Stay tuned. And, of course, feel free to open additional bugs reports for additional changes.