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== Pull Requests

Contributions to RubyGems are made via GitHub pull requests, which must be
approved by a project committer other than the author. To approve a PR, a
maintainer can leave a comment including the text "@homu r+", indicating that
they have reviewed the PR and approve it. [Homu](http://homu.io) will then
automatically create a merge commit, test the merge, and land the PR if the
merge commit passes the tests.

This process guarantees that our release branches always have passing tests,
and reduces siloing of information to a single contributor. For a full list of
possible commands, see [the Homu documentation](http://homu.io).

== Long-Term Support

RubyGems long-term support policy will be similar to and follow the Ruby
long-term support policy.

When a Ruby version reaches end-of-life, the RubyGems version included in that
release will also reach end-of-life.  After that date no security releases will
be made for RubyGems releases up to the version shipped in the next release of
Ruby.

For example, Ruby 1.9.3 reached end-of-life on 23 February 2015.  RubyGems
version 2.0.0 shipped with Ruby 2.0.0, so no RubyGems versions earlier than
2.0.0 will receive any updates.  Ruby 2.1.0 shipped with RubyGems 2.2.0.  When
Ruby 2.0.0 reaches end-of-life no RubyGems versions earlier than 2.2.0 will
receive any updates.

=== Security Fixes

Security releases will be made for RubyGems version series that were included
in a Ruby release.

For example, RubyGems 2.0.x will receive security fixes until Ruby 2.0.0
reaches end-of-life.

== Release Policies

RubyGems primarily makes bug fix releases off of the master branch.  We may mix
bug fixes and new features in the same release.  RubyGems does not guarantee
it will make bug fix releases for earlier versions.

For example, RubyGems 2.5.0 was recently released.  RubyGems does not
guarantee any non-security bugfix releases will be made upon the 2.4.x series,
or any earlier series, of releases.

Additionally, when a Ruby version reaches end-of-life the following release of
RubyGems will no longer be required to maintain backwards compatibility with
that Ruby version.  This may result in a major version change.

For example, since Ruby 1.9.3 has reached end-of-life, RubyGems may use
features of ruby that only exist in Ruby 2.0 and later.  As of this writing
RubyGems is 2.5.x, so the RubyGems version would become 3.x if it used
features only available in Ruby 2.0 and later.

== Committer Access

RubyGems committers may lose their commit privileges if they are inactive for
longer than 12 months.  Committer permission may be restored upon request by
having a pull request merged.

This is designed to improve the maintainability of RubyGems by requiring
committers to maintain familiarity with RubyGems activity and to improve the
security of RubyGems by preventing idle committers from having their commit
permissions compromised or exposed.

== Changing These Policies

These policies were set in order to reduce the burden of maintenance and to
keep committers current with existing development and policies.  RubyGems work
is primarily volunteer-driven which limits the ability to provide long-term
support.  By funding RubyTogether you can help extend support for older
RubyGems versions.