Nix Maintainers Team Charter and Protocols

# Nix maintainers team ## Motivation The team's main responsibility is to guide and direct the development of Nix and ensure that the code is in good shape. We aim to achieve this by improving the contributor experience and attracting more maintainers – that is, by helping other people contributing to Nix and eventually taking responsibility – in order to scale the development process to match users' needs. ### Objectives - It is obvious what is worthwhile to work on. - It is easy to find the right place in the code to make a change. - It is clear what is expected of a pull request. - It is predictable how to get a change merged and released. ### Tasks - Establish, communicate, and maintain a technical roadmap - Improve documentation targeted at contributors - Record architecture and design decisions - Elaborate contribution guides and abide to them - Define and assert quality criteria for contributions - Maintain the issue tracker and triage pull requests - Help contributors succeed with pull requests that address roadmap milestones - Manage the release lifecycle - Regularly publish reports on work done - Engage with third parties in the interest of the project - Ensure the required maintainer capacity for all of the above ## Members See https://nixos.org/community/teams/nix/ for the current team membership. The team is on Github as [@NixOS/nix-team](https://github.com/orgs/NixOS/teams/nix-team). ## Meeting protocol The team meets twice a week (times are denoted in the [Europe/Amsterdam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_the_Netherlands) time zone): - Discussion meeting: Wednesday 21:00-22:00 Europe/Amsterdam see [calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=b9o52fobqjak8oq8lfkhg3t0qg@group.calendar.google.com). 1. Triage issues and pull requests from the [No Status](#no-status) column (30 min) 2. Discuss issues and pull requests from the [To discuss](#to-discuss) column (30 min). Once a month, each team member checks the [Assigned](#assigned) column for prs/issues assigned to them, to either - unblock it by providing input - mark it as draft if it is blocked on the contributor - escalate it back to the team by moving it to To discuss, and leaving a comment as to why the issue needs to be discussed again. - Work meeting: Mondays 18:00-20:00 Europe/Amsterdam; see [calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=b9o52fobqjak8oq8lfkhg3t0qg@group.calendar.google.com). 1. Code review on pull requests from [In review](#in-review). 2. Other chores and tasks. Meeting notes are collected on a [collaborative scratchpad](https://pad.lassul.us/Cv7FpYx-Ri-4VjUykQOLAw). Notes on issues and pull requests are posted as comments and linked from the meeting notes, so they are can be found from both places. [All meeting notes](https://discourse.nixos.org/search?expanded=true&q=Nix%20team%20meeting%20minutes%20%23%20%23dev%3Anix%20in%3Atitle%20order%3Alatest_topic) are published on Discourse under the [Nix category](https://discourse.nixos.org/c/dev/nix/50). Team meetings are generally open to anyone interested. We can make exceptions to discuss sensitive issues, such as security incidents or people matters. Contact any team member to get a calendar invite for reminders and updates. > [!IMPORTANT] > [Handling security reports](./security-reports.md) always takes priority. ## Project board protocol The team uses a [GitHub project board](https://github.com/orgs/NixOS/projects/19/views/1) for tracking its work. Items on the board progress through the following states: ### No Status During the discussion meeting, the team triages new items. To be considered, issues and pull requests must have a high-level description to provide the whole team with the necessary context at a glance. On every meeting, at least one item from each of the following categories is inspected: 1. [critical](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/labels/critical) 2. [security](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/labels/security)

This document outlines the Nix maintainers team's purpose, structure, and operational procedures. Its primary motivation is to guide Nix's development, improve contributor experience, and scale development by attracting more maintainers. Key objectives include clarifying work priorities, simplifying code navigation, setting clear pull request expectations, and ensuring predictable merge/release processes. The team's tasks range from establishing technical roadmaps and improving documentation to managing releases, engaging with third parties, and maintaining adequate maintainer capacity. The document also details team membership, meeting protocols (discussion and work meetings), and how the GitHub project board is used to track work, including triage procedures for new items and special handling for critical and security issues. Security reports always take priority.