Hi Dev-iL,
thanks for raising the discussion and "nudging" the community on this. I
_think_ we had a discussion about this ~a year ago where we discussed
about this... but can not find it.
The thing I remember was that the lising in CODEOWNER file should be a
signal of engegement (not status) of a contributor to "take care" about
PRs. And I think in this light most of the things are organized.
Since we agreed on the provider governance stewardship model I think the
gaps you raise are really gaps where engagement ("who takes care") are
undefined. And my view always was that we make it (pragmatic as no
better mechanism) with providers the same we do with i18n - defining the
engagement for non-committers in comments and having the sponsors in.
But we never adjusted the pre-existing providers ... so I agree there
might be pre-existing providers where no committer is notified. Would be
a good chance to discuss how we distribute work - or even if providers
might need somebody to be taking care of where nobody feels responsible.
I would propose if notifications are rather "noise" then please each
contributor who is bothered un-subscribe to CODEOWNER file.
Jens
On 26.04.26 13:47, Dev-iL wrote:
Hi all,
This came up in a Slack conversation with Jarek and Elad after I noticed
that some provider test directories have no code owners and thus no
reviewers are auto-assigned on PRs touching them. We agreed that a broader
discussion is warranted here.
---
**The core problem**
Right now, CODEOWNERS means different things to different contributors:
- For some, it's a notification mechanism for areas they care about.
- For others, it implies a review expectation or commitment.
- For others still, it's mostly noise -- especially for cross-cutting PRs
that touch many providers at once.
This ambiguity creates confusion both for contributors ("why wasn't anyone
assigned?") and for maintainers ("why am I being pinged for this?").
---
**Proposed discussion points**
1. **Agree on what CODEOWNERS means in this project.** Should it signal "I
want to be notified" vs. "I commit to reviewing"? Should we support both
use cases, perhaps with different mechanisms?
2. **Coverage gaps.** Many provider directories -- including tests -- have
no owners at all. One idea: compute git blame/contribution stats across PMC
members, publish the results to this list, and *invite* (not assign) top
contributors to voluntarily claim uncovered areas.
3. **Connection to provider stewardship.** The [PROVIDER_GOVERNANCE
stewardship model](
https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/main/providers/PROVIDER_GOVERNANCE.rst#stewardship-model)
already defines a concept of stewards. CODEOWNERS could be the natural
mechanism for stewards to receive PR notifications in their providers --
but only if we align on its meaning first.
---
**Non-goals**
To be explicit: this is not a proposal to force anyone into CODEOWNERS or
to auto-assign review obligations. The Apache principle of volunteering and
consent is the baseline here.
---
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I'm happy to follow up with a
concrete proposal once we've aligned on the direction.
Best,
Dev-iL
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