Onboarding to the Project

This document is a starting point for a new team member (or a refresh for existing team members) on things that are useful to know as a member of the project, in particular in terms of where to raise concerns or get help.

Joining a team

Each team has different policies for joining new team members, as well as different responsibilities once you join. For now, you should talk to a team lead to learn what the team’s policy is (and please encourage them to document the policy here!). In general, most teams expect you to at least:

  • Contribute to the team for at least a couple months before joining
  • Respond within a reasonable time to Final Comment Periods on RFCs and PRs.

Joining wg-triage

One exception to the above is wg-triage, which we highly recommend as an introduction to working on the project. wg-triage works on triaging issues and PRs in the rust-lang/rust repository, and does not require prior experience with programming or compilers. Feel free to join wg-triage if you have ever interacted with the Rust project (interacting frequently enough that we recognize you is encouraged but not required).

To join this team, simply talk to Dylan-DPC and then open a PR to rust-lang/team. See team#1826 for an example of what changes to make.

For more information about wg-triage, see Triage Procedure.

Relationship to Council

The Leadership Council formally takes positions on behalf of the Project when needed. All Rust project members are officially represented by approximately one member of the council (some teams parent up to two or more members).

Generally speaking, any concerns you have that are either more widely applicable (i.e., not just your team) or you feel aren’t being fully handled within your team can be escalated to the Council. Note that interpersonal concerns and/or code of conduct violations should always be directed to the Moderation team.

Escalating to the Council can be done via:

  • GitHub, via a new issue. This will get discussed at the regular council meeting (to which all project members are invited).
  • Zulip, on #council.
  • Zulip DM, to your council representative (see council for which team each representative represents).

Either can be a reasonable starting point, please select what you feel more comfortable with, though bias towards being public.

Leadership Council positions are elected by the Project teams on a rotating calendar; see Council term limits for more details.

Relationship to Foundation

The Foundation works to support the Project, and the Project has direct representation on the Foundation’s board (the 5 Project directors). Those directors are selected by the Leadership Council per the bylaws.

Those directors have 50% of the vote on any Board vote in the Foundation, regardless of the number of non-Project directors.

The website has the current Project directors.

Please reach out whether you’re just interested, have questions, or have concerns in:

  • Zulip, on #foundation.
  • To the Council (see above).
  • To one of the Project Directors (see member list above), recommending Zulip DM as an initial point.