Introducing Design Review Guidelines

[Michael Hablich]

Hi fellow V8 contributors,

TL;DR The V8 project is introducing Design Review Guidelines to facilitate the design and decision making around major changes. More information can be found here.

The number of contributors to the V8 repository has grown over the course of years. In order to accommodate that, we are introducing Design Review Guidelines with the following goals:

1. Make it clear to Individual Contributors (ICs) who the decision makers are and highlight what the path forward in the case that projects are not proceeding due to technical disagreement

2. Create a forum to have straight-forward design discussions

3. Ensure V8 Technical Leads (TL) are aware of all significant changes and have the opportunity to give their input on the Tech Lead (TL) layer

4. Increase the involvement of all V8 contributors over the globe

At a glance the guidelines consist of 4 steps:

• [Step 1] Gathering first feedback

• The Individual Contributor (IC) writes an early design doc/explainer/one pager and asks a few people for input.

• The Tech Lead (TL) of the main component your feature touches suggests people that need to provide an LGTM.

1. If it is not clear who the TL is, please ask the V8 Eng Review Owners via v8-eng-rev...@googlegroups.com. 

• The IC sends out the doc to v8-dev...@googlegroups.com.

• [Step 2] Collecting LGTMs

• The IC collects LGTMs from all stakeholders with the help of their TL.

• If an LGTM provider doesn’t provide a  an LGTM, they are obligated to provide an explanation why

• [Step 3] Optional: Escalation

• If the "NOT LGTMs" can't be resolved, the IC and TL escalate to v8-eng-rev...@googlegroups.com.

• Together with the IC and TL the next steps to unblock the change are decided.

• [Step 4] Implementation

• The IC sends and email to v8-dev...@googlegroups.com with a link to the design doc that informs the group that implementation starts.

• The IC implements the change.

Googlers that work on V8 have been already internally dogfooding these guidelines for half a year. You might have already seen a few documents with the famous LGTM headers in your inbox.

More detail about this new process can be found on V8's public web page. Please have a look at the FAQ section in particular. If you have unanswered questions, please simply reply to this thread or send me an email directly.

Thanks,

Michael