The LSST stack relies on a number of “external” packages: tools or libraries which are not developed in-house, but which are bundled with the stack for ease of installation. Examples include Boost and SQLAlchemy among others.
It would be unfortunate for the LSST versions of these packages to diverge significantly from their upstream counterparts. In order to keep a check on this, only a limited subset of developers are able to push changes into the repositories hosting externals. The rest of us should ask one of these authorized few to help us out in addition to going through the usual process of code review.
I understand that the suggested workflow for changing an external is as follows (but SQuaRE, Project Engineering, etc may wish to correct me!):
- Fork the repository to your own personal account;
- Make changes on a branch, following the usual naming conventions, on your personal fork;
- Issue a pull request from your fork to the origin in the
lsstorganization. - When you are ready to merge, ask somebody on the dm-externals team to help.