Gerrit owners plugin coming

[Andrew Jeffery]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2021, at 05:53, Ed Tanous wrote:
> Over the last few weeks, we've been slowly getting the gerrit owners
> plugin deployed and tested, and got the OWNERS files merged into their
> respective meta layers.
> 
> This has been leading up to a process change that has been on the
> roadmap for some time now.  Once the plugin is enabled (and some other
> housekeeping is done) meta-layer changes will be able to be submitted
> to the normal openbmc/openbmc repository, simplifying one portion of
> our review/merge process.  Submitting to openbmc/openbmc is something
> most newcomers to the project expect, and we've had numerous gerrit
> reviews submitted to the wrong repo in error.  Hopefully, this change
> makes meta-layer changes much more normalized.
> 
> Once this goes in, this means that functionally:
> 1. We no longer have a bottleneck on creating new meta-layers,
> renaming meta layers, or moving files between meta layers.  New meta
> layers can be submitted through gerrit similar to any other patchset,
> and will be reviewed with the same process we already have for any
> other type of code, and don't require requesting a new repo in
> advance.
> 2. Changes that require mods to all meta layers (yocto compat fields
> for example) can be done in a single commit, across all systems at
> once, reducing the possibility of breaking builds for meta-layer
> combinations that aren't covered by CI.
> 3. No more waiting for your meta-X changes to get merged into
> mainline, which should reduce the amount of time between recipe bumps
> and the main build reflecting the changes.
> 
> Ownership of the various meta-layer folders is still enforced by
> gerrit through the owners plugin using the OWNERS files.  Today, they
> contain the same mapping as the content in the MAINTAINERS files, so
> no files in the repo actually change ownership.
> 
> The final review to add the OWNERS file to the root of the repo is here:
> https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/openbmc/+/39379
> And has already had some discussion and looks to be good to go.
> Assuming there's no other objections, I'd like to get this change made
> on this coming Sunday.
> 
> Overall, I hope that this will be a great improvement in the overall
> structure and usability of openbmc, and remove at least one stumbling
> block people new to the project tend to hit.

This is great! Thanks for pushing it.

Andrew