Development Resources/HOWTO/Review Information for Project Leads

The purpose of this wiki page is to provide information to a Project Lead (PL) who has requested a review. When the PL emails EMO to request a review, EMO will reply with a pointer to a section of this page so that the PL has detailed information about all the steps in the review process.

About Reviews

In the past, we held "Review Calls". We don't do that anymore. The notion of a review call has been replaced by a "Review Period".

• Reviews are an opportunity to inform the community of significant changes to a project, or major events in the lifecycle of a project;
• Reviews happen at the request of the PMC or Project Lead, in an email to EMO;
• A Review occurs over a period of no less than five generally-accepted business days;
• Frequency is typically limited to every other week - at the request of the Board ("not too many reviews");
• Multiple Reviews may be scheduled together in one Review Period - due to the twice a month scheduling, we need to have multiple reviews at the same time to fit in all the reviews we need to have each year; and
• Reviews are added to the Project Review table as soon as the date is confirmed so that the community knows about them well in advance.

The community is encouraged to ask questions about the review on the designated Communication Channel (usually the project's newsgroup). The EMO determines the result of the review based on the review documentation and on community feedback.

Creation Reviews

The purpose of the Creation Review is to assess the community and membership response to the proposal, to verify that appropriate resources are available for the project to achieve its plan, and to serve as a committer election for the project's initial Committers. The Eclipse Foundation strives not to be a repository of "code dumps" and thus projects must be sufficiently staffed for forward progress.

Please see Creation Reviews.

Graduation Reviews

Helpful Documentation from the Eclipse Development Process

• About Graduation Reviews
• Guidelines for Graduation Reviews

Before you can consider a Graduation Review, all of the relevant CQs must be approved by the Eclipse Legal team. We cannot schedule a Review before the Legal team has completed their work. If you are waiting for CQs, please review where your CQs are, and when they are scheduled to be reviewed, in the IP team work queue.

After you have verified that all relevant CQs are approved, the following items must be completed at least one week before the start of the scheduled review period:

1. PMC Approval (Can occur in parallel with, prior to, and after, the IP clearance);
2. IP Log Approval This is essential, and no release review can proceed without it!; and
3. Review document.

PMC Approval

Please forward an email showing that you have PMC approval for the review. The easiest way to do this is to request approval on your PMC mailing list and forward the response to EMO.

Project Plan

Your project plan must be current. The URL for your plan must be listed in your review documentation.

IP Log Approval

Because IP Log approval is essential and can take varying amounts of time (depending on the work queue of the IP Team), projects must have an approved IP Log before their review date is confirmed. After you have submitted the IP Log to Eclipse Legal for approval, the review is added to the schedule with the notation Waiting for IP Log. After EMO is notified that the IP Log is approved, that notation is replaced with the date of the review.

Please use the automated IP Log Tool to update and and submit your IP Log. This page explains how the tool works. This section of the page explains how to submit the IP Log. The URL for using the tool for your project uses your project ID, in this format: http://www.eclipse.org/projects/ip_log.php?projectid=project ID.

While you are waiting for IP Log approval, we suggest that you obtain PMC approval for the review and begin work on your document.

Review Documentation

Please submit your review document in an email attachment to EMO. Many people underestimate the time and effort needed to create the document, so be sure to allow enough time for this task. The "official" due date for the document is one week before the scheduled start of the review period (T - one week). However, the documentation need to be reviewed by the EMO before posting. If you wait until the due date to submit the first draft and the EMO requests changes, then you'll probably miss your deadline and your review will be postponed. We strongly suggest this timeline for submitting documentation:

• T - two weeks: submit first draft via email to EMO
• T - 10 days: submit final draft after responding to any EMO requests for revision
• T - one week (due date): EMO posts final version on website before sending review announcement email

Please note that that we need both a vendor-neutral format file (PDF, HTML) and the source format that you used to create it; we archive both versions.

Many projects overlook these items when they do their first draft:

• correct copyright notice;
• EPL notice;
• URL for the project page in this format (see above);
• review date;
• IP Log URL; and
• Communication Channel.

Release Reviews

The purposes of a Release Review are: to summarize the accomplishments of the release, to verify that the IP Policy has been followed and all approvals have been received, to highlight any remaining quality and/or architectural issues, and to verify that the project is continuing to operate according to the Principles and Purposes of Eclipse.

Please see Release Reviews.

Move Reviews

A "Move Review" is a special case of a "Restructuring Review" (see below).

Restructuring Reviews

A Restructuring Review is an opportunity to notify the community about "significant" changes in your project. This can be as simple as a change of name or scope, or as complex as a splintering of the project into multiple projects with distinct scopes, committers, and so forth.

Please see Restructuring Reviews.

Termination (Archive) Reviews

Helpful Documentation from the Eclipse Development Process

Before your About Termination Reviews Termination Review is officially scheduled (and appears here), we need two things in place at least one week before the scheduled start of the review period:

1. PMC Approval: Can occur in parallel with, prior to, and after, the IP clearance;
2. Documentation

PMC Approval

Please forward an email showing that you have PMC approval for the review. The easiest way to do this is to request approval on the PMC mailing lists and forward the responses to EMO.

Review Documentation

For a Termination Review, the document describes the reasons for the termination, and includes the steps you will go through to terminate and archive the project (aka your Termination/Archive Plan). Please consider these items when writing your Termination/Archive Plan:

• List the committers who should be "de-committerized" because the project is being terminated; and
• Describe what needs to be shut down and archived as a result of the termination, considering these items:
  • Source code repositories;
  • Web pages;
  • Bugzilla products;
  • Newsgroups; and
  • Mailing lists

Please submit your document in an email attachment to EMO. Many people underestimate the time and effort needed to create the document, so be sure to allow enough time for this task. The "official" due date for the document is one week before the scheduled start of the review period (T - one week). However, the document needs to be reviewed by the EMO before posting. If you wait until the due date to submit the first draft and the EMO requests changes, then you'll probably miss your deadline and your review will be postponed. We strongly suggest this timeline for submitting documentation:

• T - two weeks: submit first draft via email to EMO
• T - 10 days: submit final draft after responding to any EMO requests for revision
• T - one week (due date): EMO posts final version on website before sending review announcement email

Please note that that we need both a vendor-neutral format file (PDF, HTML) and the source format that you used to create it; we archive both versions.

Many projects overlook these items when they do their first draft:

• correct copyright notice;
• EPL notice;
• review date;
• Termination Plan; and
• Communication Channel

After a successful Termination Review, you will be asked to

• open a Bugzilla bug, assigned to Webmaster with a cc to EMO and Sharon Corbett, describing the steps that need to be done to terminate the project (this is basically a reiteration of the Termination Plan from your review document); and
• use the Portal to remove committers from the project

Communication Channel

A review's Communication Channel is designated by the Project Lead and is used for posting feedback from the community about the review.

Copyright Notice

The format for the copyright notice is
Copyright current_year your_organization
Note that it is your organization, not the Eclipse Foundation or the name of the project.

EPL Notice

The format for the EPL notice is
Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0

Review Document Contents

Many overlook these items when they do their first draft:

• correct copyright notice;
• EPL notice;
• URL for the project page in this format (see above);
• review date;
• IP Log URL; and
• Communication Channel

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This page is moderated by the EMO.