Many changes can be implemented and reviewed via the normal GitHub pull request workflow. Some changes though are "substantial", and we ask that these be put through a bit of a design process and produce a consensus among the qri community and core team.
The "RFC" (request for comments) process is intended to provide a consistent and controlled path for charting the roadmap of qri. We've seen a number of projects in the distributed space suffer from under-considered design choices and unclear roadmapping, We're hoping strong adherence to a lightweight RFC process can help mitigate these problems. You should be able get a sense of where qri is going by reading through the accepted proposals.
We openly adknowledge this may seem premature for such an early-stage project. We're intending to put this RFC place in process now to develop a design-driven culture that others have a clear path to contribute to the future of the project.
This process is deeply inspired by the rust language RFC process, which builds on the Python Enhancement Proposals process, a big thank-you to these projects for leading the way.
Most qri repositories follow angular commit conventions which designates 8 types of change:
We only need RFCs for feat and breaking refactor changes to any of our novel
projects, which are the qri and dataset
repositories. feat and refactor changes to the frontend
will also require heavy review, but don't require an RFC.
Most of the RFC's you'll see created will be coming from the core team, but that doesn't mean you can't chime in. Constructive one-off comments are more than welcome!
A hastily-proposed RFC can hurt its chances of acceptance. Low quality proposals, proposals for previously-rejected features, or those that don't fit into the near-term roadmap, may be quickly rejected, which can be demotivating for the unprepared contributor. Laying some groundwork ahead of the RFC can make the process smoother.
Although there is no single way to prepare for submitting an RFC, it is generally a good idea to pursue feedback from other project developers beforehand, to ascertain that the RFC may be desirable; having a consistent impact on the project requires concerted effort toward consensus-building.
The best place to start is by filing an issue on this repository, the core team monitors this repo, and will provide feedback on your issue, including weather it would make for a good RFC.
In short, to get a major feature added to Qri, one must first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file. At that point the RFC is "active" and may be implemented with the goal of eventual inclusion into Qri.
0000-template.md to text/0000-my-feature.md (where "my-feature" is
descriptive. don't assign an RFC number yet).Once an RFC becomes "active" then authors may implement it and submit the feature as a pull request to the Qri repo. Being "active" is not a rubber stamp, and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; it does mean that in principle all the major stakeholders have agreed to the feature and are amenable to merging it.
Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted and is "active" implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anything about whether a Qri developer has been assigned the task of implementing the feature. While it is not necessary that the author of the RFC also write the implementation, it is by far the most effective way to see an RFC through to completion: authors should not expect that other project developers will take on responsibility for implementing their accepted feature.
Modifications to "active" RFCs can be done in follow-up pull requests. We strive to write each RFC in a manner that it will reflect the final design of the feature; but the nature of the process means that we cannot expect every merged RFC to actually reflect what the end result will be at the time of the next major release.
In general, once accepted, RFCs should not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments. More substantial changes should be new RFCs, with a note added to the original RFC. Exactly what counts as a "very minor change" is up to the sub-team to decide; check [Sub-team specific guidelines] for more details.
While the RFC pull request is up, the core team may schedule meetings with the author and/or relevant stakeholders to discuss the issues in greater detail, and in some cases the topic may be discussed at a core team meeting. In either case a summary from the meeting will be posted back to the RFC pull request.
The core team makes final decisions about RFCs after the benefits and drawbacks are well understood. These decisions can be made at any time, but the core team will regularly issue decisions. When a decision is made, the RFC pull request will either be merged or closed. In either case, if the reasoning is not clear from the discussion in thread, the sub-team will add a comment describing the rationale for the decision.
Some accepted RFCs represent vital features that need to be implemented right away. Other accepted RFCs can represent features that can wait until some arbitrary developer feels like doing the work. Every accepted RFC has an associated issue tracking its implementation in the Qri repository; thus that associated issue can be assigned a priority via the triage process that the team uses for all issues in the Qri repository.
The author of an RFC is not obligated to implement it. Of course, the RFC author (like any other developer) is welcome to post an implementation for review after the RFC has been accepted.
If you are interested in working on the implementation for an "active" RFC, but cannot determine if someone else is already working on it, feel free to ask (e.g. by leaving a comment on the associated issue).
Some RFC pull requests are tagged with the "postponed" label when they are closed (as part of the rejection process). An RFC closed with "postponed" is marked as such because we want neither to think about evaluating the proposal nor about implementing the described feature until some time in the future, and we believe that we can afford to wait until then to do so. Historically, "postponed" was used to postpone features until after 1.0. Postponed pull requests may be re-opened when the time is right. We don't have any formal process for that, you should ask members of the relevant sub-team.
Usually an RFC pull request marked as "postponed" has already passed an informal first round of evaluation, namely the round of "do we think we would ever possibly consider making this change, as outlined in the RFC pull request, or some semi-obvious variation of it." (When the answer to the latter question is "no", then the appropriate response is to close the RFC, not postpone it.)
The process is intended to be as lightweight as reasonable for the present circumstances. As usual, we are trying to let the process be driven by consensus and community norms, not impose more structure than necessary.
This repository is licensed under the MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the shall be MIT licensed, without any additional terms or conditions.