This directory contains CFP design proposals for features impacting repos across the Cilium Github organization.

Purpose of CFPs

The purpose of a Cilium Feature Proposal (CFP) is to allow community members to gain feedback on their designs from the Committers before the community member commits to executing on the design. By going through the design process, developers gain a high level of confidence that their designs are viable and will be accepted.

NOTE: This process is not mandatory. Anyone can execute on their own design without going through this process and submit code to the respective repos. However, depending on the complexity of the design and how experienced the developer is within the community, they could greatly benefit from going through this design process first. The risk of not getting a design proposal approved is that a developer may not arrive at a viable architecture that the community will accept.

How to create CFPs

To create a CFP, it is recommended to use the CFP-003-template.md file as an outline. The structure of this template is meant to provide a starting point for people. Feel free to edit and modify your outline to best fit your needs when creating a proposal.

Many design docs also begin their life as a Google doc or other shareable file for easy commenting and editing when still in the early stages of discussion. Once your proposal is ready, submit it as a PR to it's dedicated project folder (cilium, hubble, tetragon).

When you are ready to submit your CFP please:

1. Create a CFP issue in the repo your design applies to if you haven't already
2. Create the file in this repo, with a path of <repo>/CFP-###-subject.md where the number is the CFP issue number

For example, if your issue is filed in https://github.com/cilium/hubble with the issue number 000, and the subject of that CFP is to "Change foo to bar", the path would be hubble/CFP-000-change-foo-to-bar.md.

Getting feedback and promoting your CFP in the community:

• Not sure who to ping? Take a look in the Cilium's Community Teams (descriptions of the Cilium teams can be found here)
• Share it on the #development channel in Slack or one of the more specific SIG channels
• Raise the design for discussion during the weekly community call

Getting a design approved

A CFP can be merged with the approval of one committer. A CFP merged as implementable means the proposal is viable to be implemented, but not that there is a 100% chance the code will be accepted. Dormant and declined CFPs are also an important part of documentation for the project and should also be merged.

Design proposal drift

After a design proposal is merged, it's likely that the actual implementation will begin to drift slightly from the original design. This is expected and there is no expectation that the original design proposal needs to be updated to reflect these differences.

The code and our documentation are the ultimate sources of truth. CFPs are the starting point for the implementation, but can also be updated as needed.

Status

The status of a CFP indicates its maturity. There are five different statuses that a CFP can have:

1. Draft: A CFP in any form (Google doc, HackMD, PR, ect.) with associated Github issue that has not yet been merged into this repository.

2. Implementable: CFPs that have been approved by one committer and merged into this repository are given the implementable status. This means that the ideas in the CFP have been agreed in principle and the coding work can now be started. When merged, the CFP should be up to date and the relevant stakeholders should be in alignment even if they are still going through the practical ramifications of how to implement it.

3. Released [Project] X.Y: Everything listed in the CFP as part of the proposal (not future milestones) is merged into the project repository with the listed release.

4. Dormant: This status is given to a CFP that has not been implemented for a variety of reasons, like not enough engineering cycles or not currently a focus of the project. Any CFP where there is no active effort to build the solution can have the dormant status. This serves as a way to preserve previous discussions on a solution, but where the solution was not yet agreed upon as implementable. Dormant CFPs can be reactivated at any time if there is interest in the project. The next step for a dormant CFP is to amend it to be Implementable.

5. Declined: This proposal was considered by the community but ultimately rejected. The community may come back to the proposal in the future but a new CFP should be used. Rejected proposals can be useful as documentation on why the given proposal did not make sense.

Other resources

Need more clarification? Here are a list of resources from the Cilium community, and some FAQs on how to get more involved! Can't find your answer here? Please reach out on the Cilium Slack #development for other questions.

FAQs