| --- |
| title: "Gerrit Code Review - Support" |
| permalink: support.html |
| hide_sidebar: true |
| hide_navtoggle: true |
| toc: false |
| --- |
| |
| ## Quick Links |
| |
| * [Mailing list][repo-discuss] |
| * [Issue tracker][issue-tracking] |
| |
| ## Supported Versions |
| |
| The Gerrit open-source community actively supports the last 3 releases |
| on a best effort basis. Older releases are not actively maintained but |
| may still receive important fixes (e.g. security fixes), but there is |
| no guarantee for this. Which fixes are backported to these old |
| releases is decided on a case by case basis. |
| |
| End of life for old release happens implicitly when a new Gerrit version is |
| released, and is announced via the [project news](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/news.html) |
| and on the mailing list. |
| |
| The following table shows the current level of support for Gerrit releases: |
| |
| | Version | Support Status | Notes | |
| |----------|----------------|-------| |
| | 3.9 | Active | | |
| | 3.8 | Active | | |
| | 3.7 | Active | | |
| | 3.6 | EOL | [EOL since Nov 24, 2023](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2023-10-05-gerrit-3.9-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-36x) | |
| | 3.5 | EOL | [EOL since May 19, 2023](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2023-03-31-gerrit-3.8-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-35x) | |
| | 3.4 | EOL | [EOL since Nov 9, 2022](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2022-09-29-gerrit-3.7-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-34x) | |
| | 3.3 | EOL | [EOL since May 24, 2022](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2022-02-24-gerrit-3.6-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-33x) | |
| | 3.2 | EOL | [EOL since Dec 7, 2021](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2021-09-07-gerrit-3.5-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-32x) | |
| | 3.1 | EOL | [EOL since May 19, 2021](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2021-03-16-gerrit-3.4-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-31x) | |
| | 3.0 | EOL | [EOL since December 1st, 2020](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2020-09-07-gerrit-3.3-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-30x) | |
| | 2.16 | EOL with [Support](#gerrit-v216-support) | [EOL since June 1st, 2020](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2020-04-22-gerrit-3.2-release-plan.html#end-of-life-for-gerrit-216x) | |
| | 2.15 | EOL | [EOL since November 15th, 2019](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2019-11-15-gerrit-2.15-eol.html) | |
| | 2.14 | EOL | [EOL since May 31st, 2019](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/2019-05-31-gerrit-end-of-life-update.html) | |
| | 2.13 | EOL | | |
| | pre 2.13 | EOL | | |
| |
| The same support status, as well as notes and documentation for every recent Gerrit release is |
| [detailed here](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/releases-readme.html). |
| |
| ## General Support |
| |
| [Repo Discuss][repo-discuss] should be your first stop when you |
| encounter an issue with Gerrit. |
| |
| Here you will reach a majority of Gerrit contributors and Gerrit |
| admins around the world. Often someone has had your issue before |
| and can help you. |
| |
| Many questions regarding Gerrit concerns are a direct result of |
| local environment and configuration. Often such issues have already |
| been discussed on the repo-discuss mailing list and you may find an |
| answer by searching through the existing posts. If you have a new |
| question, you can start a new discussion thread. Via the mailing |
| list you can reach a plethora of Gerrit experts in our world wide |
| community and benefit from their collective knowledge. |
| |
| The repo-discuss mailing list is managed to prevent spam posts. This |
| means posts from new participants must be approved manually before they |
| appear on the mailing list. Approvals normally happen within 1 work |
| day. Posts of people that participate in mailing list discussions |
| frequently are approved automatically. |
| |
| You can also join us on [discord][discord-server]. A maintainer or |
| community manager should then be able to address your request. |
| |
| |
| You could also check the questions tagged with "gerrit" on |
| [Stack Overflow][stack-overflow]. |
| |
| ### Gerrit v2.16 Support |
| |
| Existing users having issues with the migration to/through Gerrit v2.16 can |
| still use the [General Support](#generalsupport) on the mailing list as usual |
| and it's possible that community members will be able to assist them. |
| |
| ## Bugs |
| |
| If the issue/question you posted on Repo Discuss is considered a bug |
| the community will ask you to create an issue for tracking it. |
| Bugs are reported to the [issue tracker][issue-tracking]. |
| The issue tracker is not always the best place to initially request |
| new features, as the main focus for those consuming it is fixing |
| bugs. |
| |
| ## New Features |
| |
| The Gerrit project has adopted a |
| [feature request model][feature-request] where you are asked to |
| submit your feature request together with some valid, general, |
| use-cases. |
| |
| ## Bug Triaging |
| |
| All incoming issues should be triaged to decide on their |
| [priority](#priorities). The priority should be based on the severity, the |
| frequency and the risk of the issue. |
| |
| Besides finding the right priority we also aim to clarify the issue so it is |
| well understandable what the problem is. |
| |
| The triage is not meant to investigate the cause of bugs or assign issues. |
| |
| Triaging should include the following steps: |
| |
| 1. Determine the right [priority](#priorities). |
| 2. For feature requests set `Type` to `Feature Request`. |
| 3. Check that the component is correctly set, and update it if necessary. |
| Move security and privacy issues to the `Gerrit Code Review > Security` |
| component (componentid: 1371046) to limit the issue visibility. |
| 4. If necessary, update the issue summary to be clear. |
| 5. If allowed flag spam issues as spam (3-dot menu -> `Mark as spam...`), |
| otherwise close them as `Won't Fix (Infeasible)`. |
| 6. Check whether the issue has been reported before and close it as `Duplicate` |
| if possible. |
| 7. Check if reproduction steps are present and clear. If not, ask the reporter |
| to provide them, assign the issue to the reporter and asked them to unassign |
| themselves from the issue once they provided the missing information (so that |
| the issue goes back into the triage queue). |
| 8. If the issue is about a bug that affects Gerrit servers hosted by Google |
| (`googlesource.com` servers) add the issue to the `Environment-Google` |
| hotlist (hotlistid: 5052245) so that Googlers can have a look. |
| 9. For issues that do not effect Gerrit servers hosted by Google |
| (`googlesource.com` servers), add the issue to the `Triaged-Yes` hotlist |
| (hotlistid: 5052889) when the triaging is done. |
| |
| **Tip:** Star this [bookmark |
| group](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/bookmark-groups/763138) to get the |
| standard hotlists suggested when adding issues to hotlists. |
| |
| Triaging incoming issues is a community effort and is done on a best effort |
| basis (also see [below](#response-time-and-slo)). |
| |
| **Tip:** You can learn more about the issue tracker's features at: |
| [developers.google.com/issue-tracker](https://developers.google.com/issue-tracker). |
| |
| ## Response time and [SLO](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/service-level-objectives/) |
| |
| Gerrit Code Review is an open-source project, which means that the people |
| that are using the tool are invited to cooperate and join for contributing |
| to its development and support. |
| Opening new issues, [triaging](#bug-triaging) existing ones and helping to resolve |
| them are ways of contributing to the project. |
| |
| There **is not a formal support contract** amongst the members of the |
| community, therefore there **IS NO guaranteed Service Level Agreement** |
| on the response and resolution of the issues raised, but we are happy to |
| define our [SLO (Service Level Objectives)](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/service-level-objectives/). |
| However, amongst ourselves, we are aiming to achieve the following response times, |
| depending on the severity of the issue raised. |
| |
| <a id="priorities">Priorities: |
| |
| | Severity | Description | Target response time |
| |----------|-------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------- |
| | P0 | Major functionality broken that renders a feature unusable | 1 working day |
| | P1 | Defect causing regression in production | 5 working days |
| | P2 | Work tied to roadmap or near term upcoming release | 30 working days |
| | P3 | Desirable feature or enhancement not in the roadmap | - |
| | P4 | Everything else | - |
| |
| > **NOTE**: Bug reports about existing features are typically classified between P0 and P3, |
| > feature requests are classified between P2 and P4. |
| |
| There are companies that are very active in developing and supporting Gerrit |
| Code Review core and the associated plugins: see below a short non-exhaustive |
| list of companies and their published support policies. |
| |
| |
| ### [Google](https://www.google.com) |
| |
| The Gerrit team at Google runs its own Gerrit deployment under the |
| `googlesource.com` domain. This deployment is in service of Google |
| projects that have external visibility or external partners. The |
| deployment is based on the latest development commit of Gerrit. |
| |
| Gerrit at `googlesource.com` shares its business logic with the |
| publicly available gerrit code, but has important differences in |
| low-level backend details, such as resource scaling, account handling, |
| search index, and the git storage. It also lacks SSH support. Due to |
| this we often lack expertise to analyze backend bugs on 'normal' |
| gerrit installations. |
| |
| When filing a bug through the "report bug" link on googlesource.com, |
| the component 'Gerrit Code Review > Hosting > googlesource' is selected |
| by default. Issues on this component are triaged by the Gerrit |
| Infrastructure team at Google on a daily basis. |
| |
| In addition, issues on the following components are triaged by Google: |
| |
| * The Gerrit Experiences team at Google has a daily triage round to |
| look at all frontend/UI bugs (component |
| 'Gerrit Code Review > WebFrontend'). |
| |
| * The Gerrit Infrastructure team at Google does a daily triage on all |
| security bugs (component 'Gerrit Code Review > Security') as a |
| matter of policy. |
| |
| ### [GerritForge](http://www.gerritforge.com) |
| |
| GerritForge is [UK-based Private Limited Company](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06895373) |
| with a passion for Open-Source and is fully committed to providing *all of its |
| source code contributions* and know-how to the community, including bug-fixes, |
| features, plugins, help and support. |
| |
| GerritForge has been active in the Gerrit Code Review community |
| since [GitTogether 2011](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2011/12/gittogether-2011.html), |
| has contributed [thousands of changes](https://analytics.gerrithub.io/kibana/s/gerritcodereview/goto/1102029a35bbff8b89187b8aa31a22b4) |
| to the Gerrit platform and has been organizing the Gerrit User Summits and |
| Hackathons since the [London Hackathon 2013](https://gerritforge.com/events.html). |
| |
| GerritForge offers [**Enterprise Support (ES)**](#enterprise-support) to its |
| customers and [**Community Support (CS)**](#community-support) to the whole |
| Gerrit community; see below the SLO and SLA associated with its services. |
| |
| ### Community Support |
| |
| GerritForge provides free Community Support (CS) for the Gerrit community using |
| two channels: |
| 1. [Repo-discuss mailing list](https://groups.google.com/g/repo-discuss) |
| 2. [Gerrit issue-tracker](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/gerrit) |
| |
| GerritForge monitors the channels *on UK and EU working days, 8:00-23:00 GMT*, |
| and occasionally over week-ends and bank holidays. |
| Although a response is not guaranteed for community support, we aim to |
| meet the general [Gerrit Support SLO](#response-time-and-slo). |
| |
| > **NOTE**: GerritForge does not answer to private e-mails or Discord direct messages |
| > under the CS umbrella, because the aim is to spread the knowledge with the whole community. |
| |
| All Gerrit **non-EOL releases are actively supported** and GerritForge **is happy, |
| but not committed,** to directly fix the issue. GerritForge also hosts the |
| [CI/CD pipeline](https://gerrit-ci.gerritforge.com) for building the packaged |
| artifacts for download. |
| |
| GerritForge keeps an archive of EOL plugins builds on the |
| [CI/CD archive site](https://archive-ci.gerritforge.com/). |
| The plugins artifacts are available for download but not necessarily maintained |
| or supported. |
| |
| Gerrit **EOL releases may also be supported**, but not necessarily fixed, on a |
| good-will basis, but only if the problem can be **still relevant** on a non-EOL |
| version. All other problems and fixes associated with EOL releases fall within |
| the scope of the GerritForge's [Enterprise support](#enterprise-support). |
| |
| ### Enterprise Support |
| |
| Enterprise Support (ES) is available to GerritForge customers [for a fee](http://gerritforge.com/pricing.html) |
| using dedicated channels, monitored on a **24/7 basis, 365 days a year**. |
| |
| The response time is guaranteed by a strict SLA specified in the |
| [support contract terms and conditions](https://www.gerritforge.com/20191007.GerritEnterpriseSupport.TermsAndConditions.GerritForge.pdf). |
| |
| See more details on the [GerritForge Enterprise Support web-site](https://www.gerritforge.com/support). |
| |
| ### Supported plugins |
| |
| [GerritForge team members](https://analytics.gerrithub.io/kibana/s/gerritcodereview/goto/1102029a35bbff8b89187b8aa31a22b4) |
| have developed a number of |
| [plugins over the past 10 years](/plugins.html) and are happy to support |
| them. |
| |
| The support for plugins follows the same [CS](#community-support) and [ES](#enterprise-support) |
| policies adopted for Gerrit Code Review. |
| |
| [feature-request]: https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/dev-design-docs.html#propose |
| [issue-tracking]: /issues.html |
| [repo-discuss]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/repo-discuss |
| [discord-server]: https://discord.gg/HkGbBJHYbY |
| [stack-overflow]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/gerrit |