_posts/2025-07-31-esc-minutes.md - homepage - Git at Google

 ---
 title: "Gerrit ESC Meeting Minutes"
 tags: esc
 keywords: esc minutes
 permalink: 2025-07-31-esc-minutes.html
 summary: "Minutes from the ESC meeting held on July 31, 2025"
 hide_sidebar: true
 hide_navtoggle: true
 toc: true
 ---

 # Engineering Steering Committee Meetings, July 31, 2025

 **Participants**: Edwin Kempin [EK], Luca Milanesio [LM], Saša Živkov [SZ]

 **Next meeting**: September 24, 2025

 ## Executive Summary

 A critical Gerrit migration to Bazel 8 is needed to fix compatibility issues
 with JGit. Gerritforge offered to lead the effort with Google providing
 reviews. The immediate next step is to add more details to the associated
 [issue 303819949](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/303819949).

 Two key community events were announced: a Git Mini Summit in Amsterdam on
 August 28th and a GerritMeet at Google's Munich HQ on November 19th. The Munich
 event is notable as Google will unveil a new open-source MCP server, which
 generated significant interest.

 The future of AI-powered code review was discussed, centered on the experimental
 "help me review" feature. Google confirmed ongoing internal development and
 welcomed collaboration to prevent duplicated work. A native chat functionality
 was also proposed to streamline AI integration in the future.

 ## Migration to Bazel 8 and bzlmod

 [LM] raised the issue of migrating Gerrit to Bazel mode, noting that JGit had
 already migrated to Bazel 8 and bzlmod, causing compatibility issues with Gerrit,
 which is still on Bazel 7.6.6 and relies on WORKSPACE support. [EK] confirmed
 that the migration effort is not yet on Google’s Gerrit Team backlog, as they
 rely on Blaze, which still supports WORKSPACE for the foreseeable future.
 [LM] suggested that Gerritforge Inc. could allocate the task for the effort
 through the compatibility approach (see https://bazel.build/external/migration),
 assuming that Google is available for reviews, because any modification to the
 dependencies requires an LC+1 from a Google maintainer.
 [SZ] suggested that Matthias Sohn would be a suitable person to help with this,
 and [EK] agreed that a summary should be added to the
 [issue 303819949](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/303819949) detailing
 the work, pluses, minuses, and required involvement from Gerrit maintainers would
 be helpful to start the discussion and planning of the activity.

 ## Git Mini Summit Event in Europe

 [LM] announced that Gerritforge, GitLab, GitButler and Google are sponsoring a new
 Git event in Europe, scheduled for
 [August 28th in Amsterdam](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-europe/features/co-located-events/#git-mini-summit-2025). [LM] explained that this "Git mini summit" was organized as a community-driven complement of
 Git Merge in the US for all of those who have travel restrictions or concerns
 to the USA. Their team plans to present their work on JGit optimization and
 performance improvement with Gerrit, GitLab, and GitHub Enterprise, thanks to
 the R&D work done by Gerritforge in 2024 and 2025 as part of the
 [GHS product](https://gerritforge.com/ghs.html). [EK] mentioned that the Gerrit
 team is unlikely to participate in this community event; however, other Google
 members working on the Git Team will join.

 ## GerritMeets in Munich

 [LM] announced that Florian from Google Cloud and Daniele from Gerritforge had
 agreed to organize a GerritMeet event at the Google EU HQ in Munich, with the
 date already set to November 19th, 2025. [LM] also mentioned that Google would
 be presenting a brand-new MCP server for Gerrit Code Review as a new Open-Source
 project on the Gerrit ecosystem. [EK] and [SZ] expressed interest in attending,
 especially since it is in Germany and relevant to their activities.

 ## AI Code Review Feature in Gerrit

 [SZ] inquired about the future of Gerrit's experimental "help me review" AI button,
 which their users have been exposing internally. [EK] confirmed that there are many
 internal discussions about this feature and suggested reaching out to Milutin, who
 is driving Google's AI efforts around Gerrit, who has started implementing the
 frontend UI based on a fake backend. [EK] welcomed help from [SZ] with this effort,
 which would prevent duplicated work. [LM] noted that while the current AI suggestions
 are about 20-30% useful, integrating a native chat functionality within Gerrit could
 make existing AI code review plugins (chatgpt-code-review and ai-code-review) less
 relevant in the future, and they are happy to support Google's AI endeavor once
 it's fully open-sourced.
	---
	title: "Gerrit ESC Meeting Minutes"
	tags: esc
	keywords: esc minutes
	permalink: 2025-07-31-esc-minutes.html
	summary: "Minutes from the ESC meeting held on July 31, 2025"
	hide_sidebar: true
	hide_navtoggle: true
	toc: true
	---

	# Engineering Steering Committee Meetings, July 31, 2025

	Participants: Edwin Kempin [EK], Luca Milanesio [LM], Saša Živkov [SZ]

	Next meeting: September 24, 2025

	## Executive Summary

	A critical Gerrit migration to Bazel 8 is needed to fix compatibility issues
	with JGit. Gerritforge offered to lead the effort with Google providing
	reviews. The immediate next step is to add more details to the associated
	[issue 303819949](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/303819949).

	Two key community events were announced: a Git Mini Summit in Amsterdam on
	August 28th and a GerritMeet at Google's Munich HQ on November 19th. The Munich
	event is notable as Google will unveil a new open-source MCP server, which
	generated significant interest.

	The future of AI-powered code review was discussed, centered on the experimental
	"help me review" feature. Google confirmed ongoing internal development and
	welcomed collaboration to prevent duplicated work. A native chat functionality
	was also proposed to streamline AI integration in the future.

	## Migration to Bazel 8 and bzlmod

	[LM] raised the issue of migrating Gerrit to Bazel mode, noting that JGit had
	already migrated to Bazel 8 and bzlmod, causing compatibility issues with Gerrit,
	which is still on Bazel 7.6.6 and relies on WORKSPACE support. [EK] confirmed
	that the migration effort is not yet on Google’s Gerrit Team backlog, as they
	rely on Blaze, which still supports WORKSPACE for the foreseeable future.
	[LM] suggested that Gerritforge Inc. could allocate the task for the effort
	through the compatibility approach (see https://bazel.build/external/migration),
	assuming that Google is available for reviews, because any modification to the
	dependencies requires an LC+1 from a Google maintainer.
	[SZ] suggested that Matthias Sohn would be a suitable person to help with this,
	and [EK] agreed that a summary should be added to the
	[issue 303819949](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/303819949) detailing
	the work, pluses, minuses, and required involvement from Gerrit maintainers would
	be helpful to start the discussion and planning of the activity.

	## Git Mini Summit Event in Europe

	[LM] announced that Gerritforge, GitLab, GitButler and Google are sponsoring a new
	Git event in Europe, scheduled for
	[August 28th in Amsterdam](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-europe/features/co-located-events/#git-mini-summit-2025). [LM] explained that this "Git mini summit" was organized as a community-driven complement of
	Git Merge in the US for all of those who have travel restrictions or concerns
	to the USA. Their team plans to present their work on JGit optimization and
	performance improvement with Gerrit, GitLab, and GitHub Enterprise, thanks to
	the R&D work done by Gerritforge in 2024 and 2025 as part of the
	[GHS product](https://gerritforge.com/ghs.html). [EK] mentioned that the Gerrit
	team is unlikely to participate in this community event; however, other Google
	members working on the Git Team will join.

	## GerritMeets in Munich

	[LM] announced that Florian from Google Cloud and Daniele from Gerritforge had
	agreed to organize a GerritMeet event at the Google EU HQ in Munich, with the
	date already set to November 19th, 2025. [LM] also mentioned that Google would
	be presenting a brand-new MCP server for Gerrit Code Review as a new Open-Source
	project on the Gerrit ecosystem. [EK] and [SZ] expressed interest in attending,
	especially since it is in Germany and relevant to their activities.

	## AI Code Review Feature in Gerrit

	[SZ] inquired about the future of Gerrit's experimental "help me review" AI button,
	which their users have been exposing internally. [EK] confirmed that there are many
	internal discussions about this feature and suggested reaching out to Milutin, who
	is driving Google's AI efforts around Gerrit, who has started implementing the
	frontend UI based on a fake backend. [EK] welcomed help from [SZ] with this effort,
	which would prevent duplicated work. [LM] noted that while the current AI suggestions
	are about 20-30% useful, integrating a native chat functionality within Gerrit could
	make existing AI code review plugins (chatgpt-code-review and ai-code-review) less
	relevant in the future, and they are happy to support Google's AI endeavor once
	it's fully open-sourced.