There is no checklist here, only guidelines. There is no specific timeline on this, but historically most backend trainee maintainers have become maintainers five to seven months after starting their training.
As part of your journey towards becoming a maintainer, you may find it useful to:
Shadow a maintainer while they review an MR. This will allow you to get insight into the thought processes involved.
Have a maintainer shadow you while you review an MR as if you were a maintainer . Ideally, this would be with a different maintainer to the above, so you can get different insights.
You are free to discuss your progress with your manager or any maintainer at any time. As in the list above, your manager should review this issue with you roughly every six weeks; this is useful to track your progress, and see if there are any changes you need to make to move forward.
It is up to you to ensure that you are getting enough MRs to review, and of varied types. All engineers are reviewers, so you should already be receiving regular reviews from Reviewer Roulette. You could also seek out more reviews from your team, or #backend Slack channels.
Your reviews should aim to cover maintainer responsibilities as well as reviewer responsibilities. Your approval means you think it is ready to merge.
After each MR is merged or closed, add a discussion to this issue using this template:
### (Merge request title): (Merge request URL)During review:- (List anything of note, or a quick summary. "I suggested/identified/noted...")Post-review:- (List anything of note, or a quick summary. "I missed..." or "Merged as-is")(Maintainer who reviewed this merge request) Please add feedback, and comparethis review to the average maintainer review.
Note: Do not include reviews of security MRs because review feedback might reveal security issue details.
Tip: There are tools available to assist with this task.
FAQ
Should I ask for feedback for reviews on very small or trivial MRs that got merged without any additional feedback from maintainer?
Every trainee maintainer is encouraged to list all reviews, but may opt to not ask for maintainer feedback in trivial merge requests. This is also in sync with being respectful of other's time
Code Review Pairing
Much like pair programming, pairing on code review is a great way to knowledge share and collaborate on merge request. This is a great activity for trainee maintainers to participate with maintainers for learning their process of code review.
A private code review session (unrecorded) involves one primary reviewer, and a shadow. If more than one shadow wishes to observe a private session, please consider obtaining consent from the merge request author.
A public code review session involves a primary reviewer and one or more shadows in a recorded session that is released publicly, for example to GitLab Unfiltered.
If the merge request author is a GitLab team member, please consider obtaining consent from them.
If the merge request author is a community contributor, you must obtain consent from them.
Do not release reviews of security merge requests publicly.
When you're ready to make it official
When reviews have accumulated, you can confidently address the majority of the MR's assigned to you, and recent reviews consistently fulfill maintainer responsibilities, then you can propose yourself as a new maintainer for the relevant application.
Remember that even when you are a maintainer, you can still request help from other maintainers if you come across an MR that you feel is too complex or requires a second opinion.
Create a merge request updating your team member entry using the template proposing yourself as a maintainer for the relevant application, assigned to your manager.
@sashi_kumar "Add license check deprecation banner to project" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@dstull please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Delete crossplane model and specs" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@acook.gitlab please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Update vulnerability_reads trigger to set has_issues" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@DylanGriffith please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Sync Security Policies only for project with updated protected branches" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@bwill please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Add actor to identity verification stage flags" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@dblessing please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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There was only 1 suggestion that the concern could be added added to models that are not of type User, it was suggested by the maintainer: gitlab-org/gitlab!113277 (comment 1299122049)
@sashi_kumar "Removed CTA from Free Plan on billings page" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@ifarkas please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Query policy group approvers within group hierarchy" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@dbalexandre please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Respond 401 when unauthenticated user commits to project" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@stanhu please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Fix incorrect has_issues on vulnerability_reads" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@pshutsin please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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I suggested to change the migration approach to use vulnerability_issue_links table instead of vulnerability_reads which reduced the execution time of the migration to 18 hours from 92 daysgitlab-org/gitlab!113447 (comment 1304189435)
Post Review
I missed to notice the unwanted files which was suggested to remove
I missed to find few optimisations to the query to execute the migration
@sashi_kumar "Fix bug causing only the last schedule type policy to run" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@vshushlin please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Rebuild MR report approval rules on project access changes" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@.luke please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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I identified a functionality bug where all_security_orchestration_policy_configurations should be used instead of security_orchestration_policy_configuration
I suggested to use already existing service(Security::SecurityOrchestrationPolicies::SyncScanResultPoliciesProjectService) for syncing scan result policies
@sashi_kumar "Add cleanup migration for orphan Software Licenses" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@DylanGriffith please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Rebuild MR report approval rules on group access changes" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@jessieay please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Resolve "Implement a rake task to collect schema inconsistencies"" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@ck3g please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Move issue checklist item counts to below description" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@f_caplette please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Rename error template in IngestReportService" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@lulalala please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "GitLab Maintenance Mode should be exported via a Prometheus Metric" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@tkuah please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Use UUID to match findings with issue feedback records" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@ebaque please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Add a "publish" instruction to the pages job" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@kerrizor please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Add reveal-conceal password option" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@eduardosanz please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Add screenshot field to report abuse form" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@mayra-cabrera please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Update permissions for protected branches" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@ayufan please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Adjust tests to api admin mode (2)" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@rymai please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Remove license_scanning_policies feature flag" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@marc_shaw please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Track total visits to value streams dashboard page" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@kassio please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Move collaborators import to Advanced import setting" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@mkaeppler please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Fix container scanning via group level policy" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@cablett please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Disallow negative integers for vulnerabilities_allowed" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@stanhu please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Validate approvals_required does not exceed eligible approvers" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@mattkasa please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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@sashi_kumar "Fix deletePath and diffPath for system notes description version" was merged
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## During review- I suggested ...- I identified ...- I noted ...## Post review- I missed ...- Merged as-is@acroitor please add feedback, and compare this review to the average maintainer review.
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I provided statistics related to change to prove that the caching method proposed would not help in solving the performance problem: gitlab-org/gitlab!115746 (comment 1330281890) The MR was closed
Sashi Kumar Kumaresanmarked the checklist item Shadow a maintainer while they review an MR. This will allow you to get insight into the thought processes involved. as completed
marked the checklist item Shadow a maintainer while they review an MR. This will allow you to get insight into the thought processes involved. as completed
Sashi Kumar Kumaresanmarked the checklist item Create a merge request updating your team member entry using the template proposing yourself as a maintainer for the relevant application, assigned to your manager. as completed
marked the checklist item Create a merge request updating your team member entry using the template proposing yourself as a maintainer for the relevant application, assigned to your manager. as completed