GitHub has added a new feature that you can use to identify the people who 'own' code in a repository, so they can review any changes.

The new code owners option can be used to say which teams or individuals are responsible for a section of code. If you make a pull request on that code. the relevant people are informed automatically.

To make the feature work, all you have to do is to create a file named CODEOWNERS in the repository's root directory or in .github/. Within this file, you have lines that define a file pattern followed by one or more owners. The file format is similar to that used in the gitattributes feature.

From the point the Codeowners file is created, the people identified within it as code owners will automatically be requested for review whenever a pull request touches the files they own. A pull request is created when a developer has created a copy of an open source project, modified it, then passed the modified code back to the original project maintainer to see whether they want to include the changes into the main copy of the code.

There is an option for projects where you want to keep more control. A protected branch option means that the code owner for each owned file has to leave a review before anyone can merge a pull request to that branch.

The developers at Github say code owners was inspired by Chromium's use of OWNERS files, and that they created the Code Owners option as GitHub users said it's not always clear who should review files—even with GitHub's reviewer suggestions. Code Owners overcomes this.

More Information

Code Owners On GitHub

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