Github Subteams

[gibfahn]

Github now supports setting parents for teams. This seems like something that might be useful for us, e.g. the @nodejs/lts @nodejs/release WG issues (nodejs/Release#223).

Github docs link

[jasnell]

This definitely could be quite useful. Do you happen to know if at-mentioning the parent team notifies the child teams? Are the members of the child teams shown as members of the parent also? (I guess I could go experiment with that myself ;-) ... just wondered if you already knew)

[gibfahn]

This definitely could be quite useful. Do you happen to know if at-mentioning the parent team notifies the child teams? Are the members of the child teams shown as members of the parent also? (I guess I could go experiment with that myself ;-) ... just wondered if you already knew)

I just heard about it from @gdams , haven't tried it myself either.

[jasnell]

From the docs :-)

Child teams inherit their parent's access permissions, so repository permissions and @mentioning among nested teams work from top to bottom. If your team structure is Employees > Engineering > Application Engineering > Identity, granting Engineering write access to a repository means Application Engineering and Identity also get that access. And if you @mention the Identity Team or any other team at the bottom of the organization hierarchy, they're they only ones who will receive a notification.

Membership inheritance from parent to child teams isn't automatic. If you're a member of Engineering and someone creates a child team called Security, team members of Engineering aren't automatically direct team members of Security. Security and all other teams nested under the Engineering will inherit repository permissions and @mentions but nothing else.

This definitely looks compelling. Will have to experiment with this a bit.

[jasnell]

To kick off the experiment, I have made the @nodejs/backporting team a child of the @nodejs/lts team. Let's see how that goes.

[jasnell]

I've gone through and organized a few of the teams into logical groups.

@nodejs/build ... if anyone can verify that changes to the hierarchy has no impact on any external permissions we have configured (e.g. jenkins access), then I can make a few more organizational changes that would definitely clean things up.

[addaleax]

To kick off the experiment, I have made the @nodejs/backporting team a child of the @nodejs/lts team. Let's see how that goes.

@jasnell Just so you know, I think that accidentally (?) added me to @nodejs/lts … not that I care much, but it’s something we might want to be aware of.

edit: see @jasnell’s answer below for why it appears that way

[sam-github]

@addaleax are you sure? You attended some LTS meetings, you may be there because of that. I can't find the teams to verify, maybe clutzy, maybe becaue I lack perms.

[jasnell]

So, from the documentation and what I've been able to gather, making the Backporting team a child of LTS means that any at-mentions for @nodejs/lts will also notify @nodejs/backporting, and the members of the @nodejs/backporting team will be displayed as members of @nodejs/lts. Also, any repo permissions granted to the parent are applied to the child, but not vice-versa. In other words, it is possible to grant repo permissions to a child that are not propagated up to the parent.

[nunorafaelrocha]

Did anyone notice that you can't directly mention a member of a child team?

[gibfahn]

Did anyone notice that you can't directly mention a member of a child team?

I'm not understanding what you mean. You can do @nodejs/lts (parent) and @nodejs/backporting (child), or @mention one of them (e.g. @jasnell).

[nunorafaelrocha]

I've contacted GitHub support and that seems to be an issue that they are aware and trying to fix it.

In the case you describe you probably can mention @jasnell because he's an admin or a member of the parent team.

The bug can be found if you're using a structure like Team A > Team B > Team C, give permissions only to Team A and then trying to mention a member of the Team B or Team C (This user cannot be member of Team A)

[gibfahn]

and the members of the @nodejs/backporting team will be displayed as members of @nodejs/lts.

I thought from @jasnell's comment #13675 (comment) that people who were in the child team were automatically in the main team. For example @addaleax doesn't show up in @nodejs/lts, but she does in @nodejs/backporting.

[jbergstroem]

Just a small note: i don't know how the jenkins auth plugin will handle this, but I'm guessing it acts strictly on name - so if we are to rename things make sure we sync this with @nodejs/jenkins-admins.

[gibfahn]

Discussion has run its course, and we're already using subteams in the org, so closing.