Maintainers

LLVM is governed by an "area maintainer" model. Each subproject has its own Maintainers.md file at the top of its directory listing the people responsible for specific areas. The links below jump straight to those files.

Subproject	Maintainers file
LLVM core	llvm/Maintainers.md
Clang	clang/Maintainers.md
LLD	lld/Maintainers.md
LLDB	lldb/Maintainers.md
MLIR	mlir/Maintainers.md
Flang	flang/Maintainers.md
Flang-rt	flang-rt/ (see top-level docs)
libc	libc/ (see project docs)
libc++	libcxx/ (see project docs)
libc++abi	libcxxabi/
libunwind	libunwind/
Polly	polly/
OpenMP	openmp/
compiler-rt	compiler-rt/
BOLT	bolt/
Offload	offload/
libsycl	libsycl/
libclc	libclc/
orc-rt	orc-rt/

How the model works

The lead maintainer of LLVM core is currently Nikita Popov (nikic). Other areas have their own primary maintainers — for example, AArch64 backend, X86 backend, GlobalISel, the inliner, AliasAnalysis, the IR verifier, ConstraintElimination, OpenMPOpt, and dozens more granular areas in llvm/Maintainers.md.

Maintainers are responsible for:

• Reviewing and merging code in their area.
• Acting as the point of contact for design questions.
• Triaging incoming bug reports.
• Keeping the area's tests green.

This is a volunteer position — most maintainers do this alongside their day jobs. The project culture treats reviewer bandwidth as a finite resource: ping a maintainer politely if a PR has been quiet, but expect responses on the order of days, not minutes.

How maintainers are added

Promotion to maintainer happens through a formal process documented in LLVM Developer Policy: Maintainers. The short version: an existing maintainer nominates a candidate, the existing maintainers for that area discuss, and consensus elevates the candidate.

Reaching out to a specific subsystem

Each subproject's Maintainers.md is a directory of "who to ask" by topic. Almost every name there is also active on LLVM Discourse — discussion threads are usually preferred over email for design-level questions, while GitHub PR review is the right place for code-level questions.

For topics that span multiple subsystems, the right pattern is to start a Discourse thread in the most relevant category and let it get redirected if needed.

Reference

• LLVM Developer Policy — Maintainers
• llvm/Maintainers.md — the largest of the maintainers files; covers most LLVM-core areas
• LLVM Discourse