[Scummvm-devel] Changes in the ScummVM Team and PR approval process

[Eugene Sandulenko]

Hi Team,

I had a nice chat with wjp over a beer, and we were discussing how we may
proceed with ScummVM project since LordHoto left.

There are going to be several separate e-mails on the process, so we have
enough room for discussion. I am looking for your thoughts and obviously
seeking support.

So, after almost 5 years of existence of the Core Team, I am declaring it
as officially disbanded.

In the past, we had the Core Team involved mostly in the OSystem
development and architecture, and now that role comes back to the
individual developers.

That means that there is also an adjustment to the PR approval. Now the
(slightly modified) procedure will be as follows:

   1. For a sizeable, significant changes it is advised to make a Pull
   Request on the GitHub
   2. Such Pull Request will have to stay for at least 2 weeks open for the
   comments
   3. Everyone is invited to comment and review and voice their opinion
   (views of non-team members are valuable, but have no decisive power)
   4. If there are no unaddressed objections after 2 weeks, the PR could be
   merged. Exception could be made if there are suggestions over refactoring
   or tidying up the code, granted that they will be addressed in-tree
   5. Immediately after the merge the PR maker ensures that
   the buildbot stays happy and is not worsened (historically we had few ports
   broken for months).

Now on the sizeable changes. First of all, this is up to the discretion of
the PR creator, but normally I expect that anything which breaks existing
the OSystem API and the Common code, or significantly extends these,
especially if it requires more work from the Porters, should go via a Pull
Request process. The goal is to ensure that everything stays maintainable.

Any developer is free to open the PRs for less significant changes, and
that process could be used very well for facilitating discussion and
collecting feedback, but when there are no big changes involved, no 2 weeks
timeout is enforced.

Individual engine sub-teams decide by themselves on the process. As I am
aware, currently the SCI development is performed via PRs as well for any
sizeable changes. It is up to that sub-team to drop this rule any time or
make something even stricter. Just make sure you continue enjoying hacking
on the ScummVM.

That sums up this change on the Core Team.


Eugene Sandulenko
ScummVM Team Lead
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