[webkit-dev] Changes to the WebKit2 development process

[Sam Weinig]

Hello webkit-dev,

We are making some changes to the development process for WebKit2. These changes were announced to reviewers in advance, and I'd like to share them with you now.

WebKit2 has a core set of functionality that is valuable to all ports, and then aspects that are only of limited/specialized interest. It is becoming increasingly difficult to improve and advance the core functionality while maintaining the more peripheral aspects. In addition, changes to the core often require significant expertise to evaluate, for instance to ensure that the security and responsiveness goals of WebKit2 are met.

The changes are:

1) WebKit2 now has owners. Only owners should review WebKit2 patches. While we do not want to apply this concept across the whole WebKit project at this time, for WebKit2 it is appropriate. The list of owners is documented in the Owners file at the WebKit2 top level directory, and in committers.py.  

2) Ports must keep themselves building. Non Apple Mac ports, if broken by core functionality changes to WebKit2, are now responsible for fixing themselves. We have asked those who run the EWS bots to make sure that failing to build WebKit2 does not block the commit queue from committing.

3) Over time, owners may remove peripheral functionality from the main WebKit2 directory, such as support for features that aren't broadly applicable. We will not do this immediately, and we will work with ports that are interested in such features to create appropriate, maintainable general-purpose mechanisms that can be used to implement them outside of core WebKit2 code.

While we understand that this change will inconvenience some ports, we have decided that forward progress of WebKit2 is a more important concern, and we are moving forward with this change tonight.

- Sam