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+# Merging changes in Coq
+
+This document describes how patches (submitted as Pull Requests) should be
+merged into the main repository (https://github.com/coq/coq).
+
+## Code owners
+
+The [CODEOWNERS](/.github/CODEOWNERS) file describes, for each part of the
+system, two owners. One is the principal maintainer of the component, the other
+is the secondary maintainer.
+
+When a pull request is submitted, GitHub will automatically ask the principal
+maintainer for a review. If the pull request touches several parts, all the
+corresponding principal maintainers will be asked for a review.
+
+Maintainers are never assigned as reviewer on their own PRs.
+
+If a principal maintainer submits a PR that changes the component they own, they
+must assign the secondary maintainer as reviewer. They should also do it if they
+know they are not available to do the review.
+
+## Reviewing
+
+When maintainers receive a review request, they are expected to:
+
+* Put their name in the assignee field, if they are in charge of the component
+  that is the main target of the patch (or if they are the only maintainer asked
+  to review the PR).
+* Review the PR, approve it or request changes.
+* If they are the assignee, check if all reviewers approved the PR. If not,
+  regularly ping the author (if changes should be implemented) or the reviewers
+  (if reviews are missing). The assignee ensures that any requests for more
+  discussion have been granted. When the discussion has converged and ALL
+  REVIEWERS(*) have approved the PR, the assignee is expected to follow the merging
+  process described below.
+
+In all cases, maintainers can delegate reviews to the other maintainer of the
+same component, except if it would lead to a maintainer reviewing their own
+patch.
+
+A maintainer is expected to be reasonably reactive, but no specific timeframe is
+given for reviewing.
+
+(*) In case a component is touched in a trivial way (adding/removing one file in
+a `Makefile`, etc), or by applying a systematic process (global renaming,
+deprecationg propagation, etc) that has been reviewed globally, the assignee can
+say in a comment they think a review is not required and proceed with the merge.
+
+## Merging
+
+Once all reviewers approved the PR, the assignee is expected to check that CI
+completed without relevant failures, and that the PR comes with appropriate
+documentation and test cases. If not, they should leave a comment on the PR and
+put the approriate label. Otherwise, they are expected to merge the PR using the
+[merge script](/dev/tools/merge-pr.sh).
+
+When the PR has conflicts, the assignee can either:
+- ask the author to rebase the branch, fixing the conflicts
+- warn the author that they are going to rebase the branch, and push to the
+  branch directly
+
+In both cases, CI should be run again.
+
+In some rare cases (e.g. the conflicts are in the CHANGES file), it is ok to fix
+the conflicts in the merge commit (following the same steps as below), and push
+to `master` directly. Don't use the GitHub interface to fix these conflicts.
+
+The command to be used is:
+```
+$ dev/tools/merge-pr XXXX
+```
+where `XXXX` is the number of the PR to be merged. This operation should be followed by a push.
+
+Maintainers MUST NOT merge their own patches.
+
+DON'T USE the GitHub interface for merging, since it will prevent the automated
+backport script from operating properly, generates bad commit messages, and a
+messy history when there are conflicts.