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GitHub acknowledges autocrats with 'code owner' feature
Code host also seeking crowd comment on new T&Cs
GitHub's taken a leaf out of Google's Chromium book, introducing a feature that puts review requirements under the control of someone designated as a code owner.
Either individuals or teams can be code owners, responsible for a given slab of software and notified whenever someone makes a pull request.
Those who hold the honour/burden are simply listed in a file called – you'll never guess – CODEOWNERS
in the root directory of a repository. GitHub describes the (pretty simple) syntax here.
# This is a comment. # Each line is a file pattern followed by one or more owners. # These owners will be the default owners for everything in the repo. # Unless a later match takes precedence, @global-owner1 and @global-owner2 # will be requested for review when someone opens a pull request. * @global-owner1 @global-owner2 # Order is important; the last matching pattern takes the most precedence. # When someone opens a pull request that only modifies JS files, only @js-owner # and not the global owner(s) will be requested for a review. *.js @js-owner # You can also use email addresses if you prefer. They'll be used to look up # users just like we do for commit author emails. docs/* docs@example.com
GitHub's also asking for community input on an updated terms of service, discussed here, the most important of which cover private repositories and licences. ®