# Do FreeBSD OS developers discuss before huge changes?



## fel1x (Sep 12, 2021)

When we summit patches the process is

There is a bug on bugzilla.freebsd.org
Someone creates a patch, and committers review it on reviews.freebsd.org
When the patch seems okay, a committer commits a patch.
However, if someone made a huge change, such as changing OS structure, adding shells and commands (i.e. adding zsh, ksh, or openrc) (I'm not sure that the word "huge" is appropriate for this case) In this case, do developers have meeting or discussion before he or she starts working on or decided to accept or discard on reviews.freebsd.org like patches?


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## Beastie7 (Sep 12, 2021)

Yes. The committers uphold a standard to not violate POLA.

It's generally good practice to discuss ideas before they're even manifested.


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## fel1x (Sep 12, 2021)

How and where? On mailing lists or they have meetings online?


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## Beastie7 (Sep 12, 2021)

The mailing lists is your go to. The ones I tend to watch are the -current, -hacker, -arch lists. The committers tend to discuss matters on phabricator as well, which is pretty enlightening. Hope that helps.


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## rigoletto@ (Sep 12, 2021)

In short, big and fundamental changes are usually discussed for years (specially on the private developer mail lists). In some circumstances, the discussion take so long at the end *not* changing isn't ever realistic anymore (no one, users or developers, have been using the old "thing" but the new for long time).


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2021)

Does anyone think they are never discussed and just done by a lone developer without telling anyone?


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## mer (Sep 12, 2021)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Does anyone think they are never discussed and just done by a lone developer without telling anyone?


Yes, I bet all the SMP work in 5.x was done on the sly,never ever discussed in arch.  ( that was sarcasm for those that have trouble discerning it ).

At a bare minimum there are notifications when things are committed, so anyone with a commit bit will be "outed" for merging something to a branch.  If others think "why did they do that"?  I'd bet lots of discussion around the why happen.


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## tingo (Sep 17, 2021)

There is info available if you look. For example this: https://wiki.freebsd.org/DeprecationPlan
and this mailing list thread about gvinum https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2021-March/093358.html


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## grahamperrin@ (Sep 18, 2021)

Via <https://wiki.freebsd.org/Phabricator#Links>: 

Code Review
<https://issue.freebsdfoundation.org/publication/?m=33057&i=679582&p=16> 
– John Baldwin, FreeBSD Journal DE September/October 2020


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