Committers' FAQ

• Committers' FAQ
  • Contents
• General Questions
  • I have just been elected a Committer, so what I should do now?
  • What Is ApacheCon?
  • What Is A Hackathon?
  • What Is An Infrathon?
  • What Is PlanetApache?
  • I need to request some changes to infrastructure?
  • Being committed and managing my energy
  • What machines do I have access to?
  • How Long Will It Take For A CLA To Be Registered?
  • How do I start a new project in the ASF?
  • Is there a way to see a graph of loads (CPU, I/O, network)?
  • What are the responsibilities of a Committer?
  • Is there a set term for acting as a Committer? Will I have to be elected again?
  • What are the core beliefs of The Apache Way?
  • I'm Told That The Host Key Has Changed When I To Login To My Apache Account. What Should I Do?
  • How Do I Bring Code Developed Outside Apache To An Existing Project?
  • What Do I Need To Keep In Mind When Applying Patches From A Contributor?
• Version Control Questions
  • Why Do I Get An Authorization Failure When I Try To Access SVN?
  • Where is the committers/ module?
  • Why Do I Get a 403 When I Try To Commit?
  • When Do I Need To Use svn lock?
  • Where Can I Find More Information?
• Mail Questions
  • How do I setup my email account?
  • How do I request the creation of a new mail list?
  • How do I find out how many people are subscribed to a list?
  • How do I request changes for mail list moderators?
  • I am a moderator and receive these "MODERATE" emails.
  • I didn't forward my mail before. How can I download my old mail?
  • Where Should Project Business Be Discussed?
  • I've Just Made My First Commit. Why Isn't A Commit Message Delivered?

Read the Guide for new committers. That guide is also useful for existing committers, and provides links to other sources of information.

The Apache Software Foundation periodically organizes conferences focusing on software developed by Apache and on the way that Apache develops it's software. Learn about what's happening at Apache, hack code and meet the faces associated with the names!

A face-to-face gathering for the hacking of code.

A face-to-face gathering for work on the Apache infrastructure.

Planet Apache aggregates RSS feeds from Apache committers. It's not run by the ASF but committers with blogs are welcomed. See the contents of the committers/planet directory in the private repository.

You might notice something that needs changing, for example the configuration for a mailing list. The request to the infrastructure@ list or the apmail@ alias needs to come from your Project Management Committee. That ensures that the requests are official, and not just an individual user's desire. This is the same for all requests for infrastructure changes. However, please try to get your PMC to assist first. There are many things that the PMC or PMC chair can do, thereby easing the load on the infrastructure team.

Heed the warnings in these two email threads (read them all the way through): What is a member and volunteeritis. The discussion is about what it means to be a committed person at the ASF and how to deal with your internal pressure that arises from such dedication.

We each need to re-read those two important messages from time-to-time and remind our communities.

Please see the Machines List.

The short answer is: it depends. You shouldn't be worried until a week or two has passed since the date you expected the document to arrive.

When a CLA is submitted, there are several stages to the process.

The first is that it has to arrive in the hands of an Officer of the ASF. For emailed and faxed documents, this is quick. For snail mailed documents, this is sometimes slow and often very slow if posted from outside the US.

The second is that the document has to be acknowledged by the ASF Secretary. Acknowledged documents are noted in the appropriate file in the foundation repository.

The third stage is waiting until you know that the ASF has registered the document. ASF members can watch the commit records or check the file. Others will need to wait until Jim's page is regenerated from that file and so they may experience an additional delay.

Or move a project into the ASF?

Please contact the Incubator Project. They will assist you in starting projects or moving them into the ASF. For a more technical overview, please read, the project creation guide.

Apache Labs could also be for you if you want to start something new.

Henk Penning and Vadim Gritsenko have such statistics and cool charts.

Note: this is an incomplete collection and not authoritative.

As an Apache volunteer, you have the right to set your own priorities and do the work that scratches your own itch. As a Committer, you have a responsibility to the community to help create a product that will outlive the interest of any particular volunteer (including yourself). This means, for example, that the code that you commit should be clear enough that others not involved in its current development will be able to maintain and extend it. It also means that you are responsible for helping to grow and maintain the health of the Apache community.

More specific responsibilities of Committers include:

Deciding on release plans and releases

A prime responsibility of the Committers is to decide when a branch of code is ready for release. A release is not to taken lightly; each release must uphold the Apache tradition of quality. Each Project Management Committee formally authorizes the distribution of releases to the public.

Applying patches

In order to grow and maintain healthy communities, committers need to discuss, review and apply patches submitted by volunteers. The Committers are also responsible for the quality and IP clearance of the code that goes into ASF repositories.

Helping users

Committers should monitor both the dev and user lists for the projects that they work on and (collectively) provide prompt and useful responses to questions from users.

Monitoring commits and issues

Committers should review commit email messages for their projects and point out anything that looks funny or that may bring in IP issues. Monitoring Bugzilla / Jira for bugs or enhancement requests is also a responsibility of Committers.

Helping out with the web site

The main Apache web site and the project web sites are in constant need of maintenance. The Committers on a project are expected to collectively maintain the project's web site. The Apache Committers as a whole share the responsibility to maintain the main Apache site.

Merit never expires. If you become inactive for a time (usually six months or more) your account may be deactivated for security reasons. Most projects allow reactivation of committer status by application to the pmc.

Some projects use the concept of a emeritus committer status. This is typically suitable for those committers who can no longer they can give the time they feel is required.

Note: While there is not an official list, the following six principles have been cited as the core beliefs of The Apache Way:

• collaborative software development
• commercial-friendly standard license
• consistently high quality software
• respectful, honest, technical-based interaction
• faithful implementation of standards
• security as a mandatory feature

Any message about a change to the host key should be taken very seriously: it may indicate a man-in-the-middle attack is in progress.

Do not ignore this message and continue.

Before contacting the Apache infrastructure team, check that you are logging in to the correct machine. The permanent home for Apache accounts is people.apache.org.

The SSH fingerprints for the host key can be found here: new-committers-guide.html#spoof

For any substantial codebase that has been developed outside the ASF, a small amount of process is required before the code can be committed. This is managed by the Incubator. The first step is to contact your PMC.

You need to make sure that the commit message contains at least the name of the contributor and ideally a reference to the Bugzilla or JIRA issue where the patch was submitted. The reasons: this preserves the legal trail and makes sure that contributors are recognized. Obviously, the latter doesn't mean it's not a good idea to list the names of all contributors somewhere on the website. To make it easier to "grep" for commits with patches from contributors, always use the same pattern in the commit message. Traditionally, we use "Submitted by: <name>" or "Obtained from: <name>".

Here's an example of what such a commit message could look like:

Bugzilla #43835:
Added some cool new feature.
Submitted by: John Doe <john.doe.at.null.org>

The most common reason is that you've forgotten your password!

The password used for subversion is not the same as the password you use for access to people.apache.org. You will not be prompted to enter it frequently. This makes it is easy to forget.

Apache employs a number of different HTTP authentication realms. You will need to enter your password whenever you access a new realm. (Subversion prints information about the realm when you are prompted for the password.) Please don't assume that infrastructure have made a mess of permissions or that something has mysteriously broken: you'll just feel very small when infrastructure tell you to log onto people.apache.org and reset your password by typing:

  > svnpasswd

Of course, it is also possible that you're accessing an url which is restricted. That's probably for a good reason so unless you know that you should have access, don't bother the infrastructure team.

In Subversion, url: https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers

When you are initially granted karma for a new project you may see a message similar to:

svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: MKACTIVITY of '/repos/asf/!svn/act/090eb2e4-560f-0410-81de-d8ec7c0669a2': \ 
     403 Forbidden (http://svn.apache.org)

The clue here is the URL: http://svn.apache.org. Commits to an ASF repository are only allowed over https but the current working copy has been checked out over http. Subversion provides an easy way to change the working copy: svn switch. For example:

svn switch --relocate http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/project/module \
     https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/project/module

Very rarely if ever. Please read this.

The Version Control FAQ.

See these instructions.

Mail lists are the virtual room where the communities live, form and grow. It is wiser to keep the number of mail lists per codebase the smallest possible to allow the community to reach that critical mass that is necessary to bootstrap a codebase and keep it in good shape.

At the same time, as communities grow, the need for more specialized mail lists appears. This is the suggested chain of actions to request the creation of a new mail list:

• Request a vote in the community
• If the creation is accepted, your Project Management Committee needs to send in a request (more details).

Anyone with access to the apmail account can run the command ezmlm-list ~/lists/project/listname | wc -l to get a count of addresses. Remember that there often are people subscribed to the digest version too (~lists/project/listname/digest).

Moderators can send emails to listname-list@tlp.apache.org.

However, most committers do not have access to apmail. See the notes in the "committers" SVN module at /docs/resources.txt for another way.

Ask your PMC to send a request to the apmail alias.

If you have access to apmail, you can just change the list of subscribers to list/mod. For example for the mod_perl dev list that is in ~apmail/lists/perl.apache.org/dev/mod/. Use ezmlm-list, ezmlm-sub and ezmlm-unsub to do that.

To determine who are the existing moderators, any committer can use the technique described in the "committers" SVN module at /docs/resources.txt

First look in the mail and check if it is spam (or other severely misguided mail). If it is, then just ignore the mail and it will bounce after 5 days, or reply to the -reject address in the mail header.

If it is legitimate mail from a non-subscriber (or someone sending with a different envelope sender than the one subscribed), reply to the moderate request to the -accept address. If you also send mail to the -allow address (i.e. reply to all) then future postings from that address will be allowed through automatically.

If there is no -allow address in the moderate requests the list was misconfigured when it was setup and you should contact apmail@apache.org and get them to enable remote administration.

See the EZMLM "Moderator's and Administrator's Manual". You can also send email to {listname}-help@tlp.apache.org from your moderation address (there are extra details for moderators).

Some lists are only open to ASF committers. The moderators have methods to ensure that subscribers are committers, so subscribers can use whatever email address that they want. Moderators see the tips described in the "committers" SVN module at /docs/resources.txt

If you have a troublesome poster, then you can un-subscribe them from the list using {listname}-unsubscribe-badboy=menace.com@tlp.apache.org (and send a courtesy email to them).

Occasionally you will get someone with a poorly-configured spam filter sending automated replies to the list. You can deny their postings using {listname}-deny-subscribe-badpostmaster=menace.com@tlp.apache.org (and send a courtesy email to them).

When there is no .forward file then mail builds up in the Mailbox of your people.apache.org home directory. This is a bad thing. Sooner or later, all that mail will need to be downloaded.

Here is presented a simple method to move the mail from people.apache.org into a Thunderbird mail client. Copy the mailbox from your people.apache.org directory to your local machine. For example:

  scp USER@people.apache.org:/home/USER/Mailbox /tmp/Mailbox

And then copy it into your Thunderbird Mail folder. For example:

  mv /tmp/Mailbox "thunderbird/profile/Mail/Local Folders"

The name of the directory might differ depending on your thunderbird version and configuration.

That's all!

Answered here.

The most likely explanation is that the commit message is awaiting moderation. Messages will be delivered promptly without moderation once the moderator approves posts from your apache.org address.