Using owners.py in depot_tools does sound like a good way to go. We could add depot_tools to sys.path, and maybe use owners.Database.reviewers_for(<files>)?

In https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/645528/2#message-adc7b287dc2c61f9b5c3751e11f3dc6717017c9c dpranke@ says "For what it's worth, I've posted a CL to add a `git-cl owners --batch` command that can allow you to non-interactively get a covering list of owners/reviewers for your CL. That would hopefully be useful here."

I hope this is not too cavalier, but I personally haven't found the notification emails terribly useful. That's because unless a directory is already in very good shape, reacting to each additional failure as it happens, even if only by filing a bug, isn't the best way to prioritize work in that area. Rather, one would want some tooling to understand all the current failures, and whether there are bugs filed for each.

So, I'll go ahead and land https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/645528 without this being fixed, since the directories were previously unowned.

Started a broader discussion on the notification mechanism on blink-dev: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink-dev/L4-7ZIfMK3Q/discussion

Well it's not exactly "blocking", but I'm linking this issue to  bug 765334  as that's the umbrella bug for the new notification mechanism.

This issue has been Available for over a year. If it's no longer important or seems unlikely to be fixed, please consider closing it out. If it is important, please re-triage the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience if the bug really should have been left as Available.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

"git-cl owners" has had a --batch option for more than a year now; I guess this would still be useful to have.