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Code Review Relationships
This is a description of the various people who may be involved in code review, their capabilities and the kinds of email they receive. There may be considerable overlap. For example, a branch's review team will commonly also be subscribed to code review on that branch, or the merge proposal registrant will commonly also be the source branch owner.
Per-branch relationships
Owner
Each branch has an owner, who is the only person or team, aside from admins, who can write to the branch.
Review Team
Each branch may have a "review team". This is the group of people (or person) whose reviews are trusted input for deciding whether to accept a merge into this branch. By default, this team is requested to review any new proposal to merge into this branch, but the merge proposal registrant can specify an alternate reviewer. If the review team is not set, the branch owner is used as the review team. This setting does not cause any additional mail to be sent to members of the review team.
Subscribers
Each branch has zero or more subscribers. They may be subscribed to metadata changes, revision updates, and / or code review. Subscriptions allow the subscriber to control the kinds of email sent to them, and also the size of branch update diffs. They allow an individual to override the subscription settings their team may have. Subscribers to code review are notified when this branch is the source or target of a merge proposal. When a branch is created, we automatically subscribe its owner to code review. In the future, we may also subscribe the review team.
Per merge-proposal relationships
In the descriptions below, "edit rights" includes:
- setting the commit message
- deleting the merge proposal
- requesting a review
- resubmitting the merge proposal
It does not include setting the status of the merge proposal, which is restricted to the review team and branch owner.
Registrant
The person who proposed the merge. This person has edit rights on the merge proposal.
Source branch owner
The source branch owner has edit rights on the merge proposal.
Target branch owner and review team
They have edit rights on the merge proposal. Their reviews are not shown as "(community)". They can set the overall status of the merge proposal (i.e. mark it "approved"/"rejected"/"work in progress").
Team Reviewers
Teams who have been requested to review. Members of these teams may claim their team's review. If a member of this team performs a review, and the requested review type doesn't conflict with the specified review type, the team review request is automatically reassigned to the reviewer.
Review types are considered not to conflict if:
- One of them is blank, or
- both are the same
Individual Reviewers
People who have been requested to review or who have performed reviews. They receive all email about this merge proposal. If they have not yet reviewed, they can only opt out by reassigning their review request. Otherwise, they cannot opt out.
Commenters
People who have made comments about the merge proposal. Being a commenter does not cause them to receive email, and there is no way for them to opt-in to email about this particular proposal.
They could subscribe to code review on the source branch, and this would have the same effect as being subscribed to the merge proposal, as long as no further merge proposals were made for the source branch.
