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 comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...
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 integ ...
(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. Ope ...
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 system
A software system is a system of intercommunicating components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate programs, configuration files, which are used to s ...
s, such as
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...
.
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" mean ...
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/%[email protected]%3e]
References
{{reflist
Free software culture and documents
Version control