From 8310c5bc00de1eaf909205c53ee6996c24a0941c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ronny Pfannschmidt Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:08:26 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Doc: commit access follows demonstrated judgement, not a single clean PR Since 4c62cd451 (2016) the "Joining the Development Team" section has promised commit access to anyone who saw a pull request through that did not require extra work from the team, and invited contributors to remind us if we forgot to ask. That rule was sound when it was written. It was never really about the single pull request -- it was a proxy. Pushing something significant through in one shot meant a contributor had already developed a sense for the project, so by the time they cleared the bar they were effectively established, and handing them the commit bit only made official what was already true. The proxy no longer holds. The project carries considerably more responsibility than it did, so merge rights weigh more; and with capable agents, producing a pull request that merges without back and forth no longer demonstrates the sensibilities the rule was standing in for. Say what we actually go by: a developed sense for the project's scope, conventions and the cost of a change, shown across contributions, reviews and discussions -- and an invitation we extend rather than a bar contributors clear on demand. The "send a friendly reminder" line goes with it, since it directly invited the ask, replaced by a note that not having been asked yet is not a verdict on anyone's work. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) --- CONTRIBUTING.rst | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst index f761922a264..91a90cfdc04 100644 --- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst +++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst @@ -468,12 +468,28 @@ If in doubt, go ahead and open a PR with your best guess and we can discuss this Joining the Development Team ---------------------------- -Anyone who has successfully seen through a pull request which did not -require any extra work from the development team to merge will -themselves gain commit access if they so wish (if we forget to ask please send a friendly -reminder). This does not mean there is any change in your contribution workflow: -everyone goes through the same pull-request-and-review process and -no-one merges their own pull requests unless already approved. It does however mean you can +Commit access is an invitation the development team extends once a contributor +has shown a developed sense for the project -- its scope, its conventions, and +what a change costs the people who depend on it. + +This section used to promise commit access to anyone who saw a pull request +through without the team having to do extra work. That bar was a good proxy +for the real thing back then: getting something non-trivial merged in one go +meant you had already built that sense. It no longer works as a proxy, both +because pytest carries far more responsibility today and because a pull +request that looks clean is now much cheaper to produce than the judgement +behind it. + +So there is no threshold you can clear on demand. What we look for is that +judgement shown over time -- in the changes you propose, in the reviews and +discussions you take part in, and in a feel for which changes are not worth +making. We reach out when we think the time has come, so please don't feel +you have to ask, and please don't read not having been asked yet as a verdict +on your contributions. + +Commit access does not change your contribution workflow: everyone goes +through the same pull-request-and-review process and no-one merges their own +pull requests unless already approved. It does however mean you can participate in the development process more fully since you can merge pull requests from other contributors yourself after having reviewed them.