Role expectations

The SRU team is a narrowly scoped team that has privileged access: primarily to “accept” packages from the stable series’ unapproved queues into the -proposed pocket, and “release” packages from the -proposed pocket into the -updates pocket. Reviews and decision making, and the policy, processes and documentation around these reviews and decision making are the responsibility of the SRU team.

Other work that does not require elevated privilege, such as bug triage and management, preparing updates, performing QA, handling any follow-on regression reports and so forth, can be performed by any Ubuntu developer or prospective Ubuntu developer.

Therefore, the SRU team, when on shift and “wearing an SRU hat”, takes a narrow view of our role, focusing our limited resources on only progressing processes limited by this privilege. It is our expectation that Ubuntu developers at large drive the non-privileged tasks because they scale better.

We expect all Ubuntu developers to be familiar with the SRU process as documented here, should they need to interact with SRUs.

It is normal and expected for prospective developers to not yet be familiar with SRU process. If prospective developers are preparing uploads for SRU, then they will need a sponsor, for example through the patch pilot programme. We expect Ubuntu developers to ensure that any uploads that they sponsor meet our expectations. As above, since SRU team members focus on operations limited by privilege during their shifts, prospective developers who need help should seek that help from their sponsors, and not from the SRU team directly. To find a sponsor, try the patch pilot programme.

If review iterations are required, then prospective developers are welcome to help. However, we expect this to be supervised by sponsors and for them to intervene if required.

We therefore arrive at a set of distinct roles. Note that the person who takes on each role can change over time, even for an individual SRU.

Role	Responsibility	Who can do it
SRU Driver	Manage and triage bugs, follow the SRU process and perform the necessary development and QA tasks to see fixes land.	Anyone who understands the packaging changes necessary to land a particular fix into a stable release of Ubuntu and is willing to do that work. If this person does not have upload access to Ubuntu, then they can still take this role, under the supervision of a sponsor (sponsors can be found via the patch pilot programme).
Sponsor	Help the SRU Driver with the required process.	Someone familiar with SRU process who has upload access to the Ubuntu package archive.
SRU Reviewer	Review and negotiate proposed uploads for compliance with SRU criteria, agree the QA plan, accept uploads into -proposed, confirm the agreed plan was followed, and release -proposed packages into -updates.	SRU team members only.
SRU Process Developer	Drive process changes, documentation, etc.	Anyone, under the leadership of the SRU team.
Overriding authority	Agree exceptions to the SRU criteria.	Technical Board members only.