Documentation: Revise "24 hours wait period" rules

They're more or less the same but reworked for hopefully some more
clarity. There have been some best practices around documenting the
reason for expedited processing so let's make them official, too.

Change-Id: I620e48016a1ceda2ac43f26624ed21af01f6a0a5
Signed-off-by: Patrick Georgi <pgeorgi@google.com>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/43484
Reviewed-by: Angel Pons <th3fanbus@gmail.com>
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins) <no-reply@coreboot.org>

1 files changed, 36 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.md b/Documentation/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.md
index 59f675a2ff..4547f919ce 100644
--- a/Documentation/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.md
+++ b/Documentation/getting_started/gerrit_guidelines.md
@@ -43,15 +43,42 @@ employer is aware and you are authorized to submit the code. For
 clarification, see the Developer's Certificate of Origin in the coreboot
 [Signed-off-by policy](https://www.coreboot.org/Development_Guidelines#Sign-off_Procedure).
 
-* Let non-trivial patches sit in a review state for at least 24 hours
-before submission. Remember that there are coreboot developers in timezones
-all over the world, and everyone should have a chance to contribute.
-Trivial patches would be things like whitespace changes or spelling fixes,
-in general those that don’t impact the final binary output. The
-24-hour period would start at submission, and would be restarted at any
-update which significantly changes any part of the patch. Patches can be
-'Fast-tracked' and submitted in under 24 hours with the agreement of at
-least 3 +2 votes.
+* In general, patches should remain open for review for at least 24 hours
+since the last significant modification to the change. The purpose is to
+let coreboot developers around the world have a chance to review. Complex
+reworks, even if they don't change the purpose of the patch but the way
+it's implemented, should restart the wait period.
+
+* A change can go in without the wait period if its purpose is to fix
+a recently-introduced issue (build, boot or OS-level compatibility, not
+necessarily identified by coreboot.org facilities). Its commit message
+has to explain what change introduced the problem and the nature of
+the problem so that the emergency need becomes apparent. The change
+itself should be as limited in scope and impact as possible to make it
+simple to assess the impact. Such a change can be merged early with 3
+Code-Review+2. For emergency fixes that affect a single project (SoC,
+mainboard, ...) it's _strongly_ recommended to get a review by somebody
+not involved with that project to ensure that the documentation of the
+issue is clear enough.
+
+* Trivial changes that deal with minor issues like inconsistencies in
+whitespace or spelling fixes that don't impact the final binary output
+also don't need to wait. Such changes should point out in their commit
+messages how the the author verified that the binary output is identical
+(e.g. a TIMELESS build for a given configuration). When submitting
+such changes early, the submitter must be different from the author
+and must document the intent in the Gerrit discussion, e.g. "landed the
+change early because it's trivial". Note that trivial fixes shouldn't
+necessarily be expedited: Just like they're not critical enough for
+things to go wrong because of them, they're not critical enough to
+require quick handling. This exception merely serves to acknowledge that
+a round-the-world review just isn't necessary for some types of changes.
+
+* As explained in our Code of Conduct, we try to assume the best of each
+other in this community. It's okay to discuss mistakes (e.g. isolated
+instances of non-trivial and non-critical changes submitted early) but
+try to keep such inquiries blameless. If a change leads to problems with
+our code, the focus should be on fixing the issue, not on assigning blame.
 
 * Do not +2 patches that you authored or own, even for something as trivial
 as whitespace fixes. When working on your own patches, it’s easy to