Compiler team lacks onboarding guide for new team members (and new maintainers)

[jieyouxu]

For topics such as:

• What does the team actually do?
  • E.g. what areas concern the compiler team?
• What rust-lang/* repos does the compiler team maintain?
  • Especially parts of Forge (this repo) and rustc-dev-guide
  • Including compiler team maintained supporting crates
• Review rotations
  • E.g. backlinking to triagebot docs, and r-l/r triagebot configuration
  • Also reviews for Forge (this repo) and rustc-dev-guide?
• Backport reviews (backlink to backport docs)
• RFC and MCP reviews
• Compiler FCP subteam
  • What changes require compiler FCP sign-off? (backlink to the Approvals page)
  • RFC reviews
  • FCP reviews
• Bots and services
  • rfcbot (backlink to bot docs)
    • rfcbot.rs
  • triagebot (backlink)
  • bors (backlink)
  • Dev desktops (backlink)
  • Try jobs (backlink)
  • rustc-perf and the perf suite (backlink)
• Team-internal zulip stream

[apiraino]

Are we really lacking all this documentation? 0_o
Or did not migrate everything when we moved to the forge?

(I'll make a note to check some of those items...)

[jieyouxu]

Are we really lacking all this documentation? 0_o Or did not migrate everything when we moved to the forge?

We have a lot of these docs, but it's not very "digestible" for new compiler team members. What I had in mind is more of an onboarding index specifically for new compiler team members to get up to speed. A lot of the listed items here are already documented, but would benefit from a "new team member lens" IME.

cc @madsmtm and @mati865 since you are new compiler team members (and don't have the curse of folklore knowledge), are there more things that you would find useful for onboarding? :3

[mati865]

It's true, I have never been a member of compiler team, but I've been observing rustc repo since 2017 or 2018 and been more or less active (code contribution wise) since 2019. I'm somewhat already familiar with most of the stuff and I even witnessed their introduction 😉

The only new thing to me is team-internal zulip stream. For other things I feel like I just need to make sure I'm up to speed.

[madsmtm]

I just read the compiler forge docs, I think it did a good job at setting the expectations around what it means to review and r+ a PR.

Since you ask, I'll jot down a few minor things that confused me:

• The terminology around "the review queue" - there are several suggestions to join that, but I had no idea that corresponded to the [assign] table in triagebot.toml (maybe because I hadn't read the Triagebot docs first, but it wasn't clear that I should).
• The fact that the compiler meetings are purely textual (i.e. without voice / video chat) was strange enough to me that I kept looking for a Google Meet link, even though the docs stated fairly clearly that meetings happen on Zulip.

In general, I agree that having more links/backlinks in place would be nice.

• What rust-lang/* repos does the compiler team maintain?

  • Especially parts of Forge (this repo) and rustc-dev-guide
  • Including compiler team maintained supporting crates

Supporting crates are listed in https://forge.rust-lang.org/compiler/third-party-out-of-tree.html#list-of-out-of-tree-crates (assuming that's up to date).

For the compiler parts of Forge, I think it's pretty obvious that it's under t-compiler purview. Same goes for rustc-dev-guide, of course rustc devs (i.e. t-compiler) maintain that.

[jieyouxu]

FWIW

The fact that the compiler meetings are purely textual (i.e. without voice / video chat) was strange enough to me that I kept looking for a Google Meet link, even though the docs stated fairly clearly that meetings happen on Zulip.

That's true. "Purely textual" applies consistently for triage meetings / steering meetings. For design meetings, it can depend on who's hosting / involved in said design meetings, and the avenue can change on a per-meeting basis.

The terminology around "the review queue" - there are several suggestions to join that, but I had no idea that corresponded to the [assign] table in triagebot.toml (maybe because I hadn't read the Triagebot docs first, but it wasn't clear that I should).

is in the progress of being changed due to triagebot review queue tracking feature (see #t-compiler > Review queue tracking in triagebot @ 💬). Docs here haven't been updated quite yet because still figuring out the details.

https://forge.rust-lang.org/compiler/third-party-out-of-tree.html#list-of-out-of-tree-crates

might be outdated, I'm not super sure.

[apiraino]

@madsmtm thank you so much for your feedback, I very welcome comments from people reading our docs for the first time (I'm now blind to what's missing!).

The fact that the compiler meetings are purely textual (i.e. without voice / video chat) was strange enough to me that I kept looking for a Google Meet link, even though the docs stated fairly clearly that meetings happen on Zulip.

I've tried clarifying a little bit in #880. Can you check if it reads better? 🙂

[apiraino]

I think this can be closed as completed, all the points in the opening comment look to me resolved (ofc documentation is never finished).

I left a comment on Zulip to bump visibility for a last time.

Thank you @jieyouxu !