A committer is an individual who is permitted to modify the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

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 Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code ...

, such as

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

(or CVS). In

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

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 Software consists of computer programs that instruct the execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th cen ...

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 to represent yes-or-no privileges in access control systems of legacy

version control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code t ...

and

software system A software system is a system of intercommunicating software component, components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of Computer hardware, hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate Computer progr ...

s, such as

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

. The commit bit represents the permission to contribute to the shared code of a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

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 list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

s 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 (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

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