Project: Grafana (Observability and Analysis / Observability)
File: WORKFLOW.md

This document is based on . We assume good faith and intend to keep all processes as lightweight as possible but as specific as required. In case of disagreements about anything in this document, GOVERNANCE.md applies. The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in . Git and are used throughout this document. Team members and their access to repositories is maintained through . Team maintainers add and remove team members as outlined in GOVERNANCE.md. Examples of proposed changes are overarching architecture, component design, and specific code or graphical elements. Proposed changes SHOULD cover the big picture and intention, but individual parts SHOULD be split into the smallest possible changes. Changes SHOULD be based on and target the main branch. Depending on size of the proposed change, each change SHOULD be discussed, in increasing order of change size and complexity: Directly in a PR (Pull Request) - this MAY be done, but SHOULD not be the common case. Issue Developer mailing list Design document, shared via Google Docs, accessible to at least all team members. Significant changes MUST be discussed and agreed upon with the relevant subsystem maintainers. Depending on the size and complexity of a PR, different requirements MUST be applied. Any team member contributing substantially to a PR MUST NOT count against review requirements. Commits MUST be merged into main using PRs. They MUST NOT be merged into main directly. Every merge MUST be approved by at least one team member. Non-trivial changes MUST be approved by at least two team members, or one subsystem maintainer. Significant changes MUST be approved by at least two team members, AND the relevant subsystem maintainer. PRs MUST be and via GitHubs review system. Reviewers MAY write comments if approving Reviewers MUST write comments if rejecting a PR or if requesting changes. Once a PR is approved as per above, any team member MAY merge the PR. Critical bug fixes needed for a previous minor release should be backported to the respective release branches after coordinating with the delivery team. Please see the for further details. Grafana uses trunk-based development. In particular, we found that the following principles match how we work: Main and release branches MUST always build without failure. Branches SHOULD be merged often. Larger changes SHOULD be activated with feature flags until they are ready. Long-lived development branches SHOULD be avoided. Changes MAY be enabled by default once they are in a complete state Changes which span multiple PRs MUST be described in an overarching issue or Google Doc. Releases MUST follow in naming and SHOULD follow Semantic Versioning as closely as reasonably possible for non-library software. Release branches MUST be split from the following branches. MAJOR release branches MUST be based on main. MINOR release branches MUST be based on main. PATCH release branches MUST be split from the relevant MINOR release branchs most current PATCH Security releases follow the same process but MUST be prepared in secret. Security releases MUST NOT include changes which are not related to the security fix. Normal release processes MUST accommodate the security release process. SECURITY.md MUST be followed. Releases follow the following cadence MAJOR: Yearly MINOR: Every 4-6 weeks PATCH: As needed Releases SHOULD NOT be delayed by pending changes. Releases MUST be coordinated with the relevant subsystem maintainers.