uip | title | status | type | author | created |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0001 |
UIP Purpose and Guidelines |
Living |
Process |
Josh Lehman <[email protected]>, Ted Blackman <[email protected]> |
2023-06-l2 |
UIP stands for Urbit Improvement Proposal. An UIP is a design document providing information to the Urbit community, or describing a new feature for Urbit or its processes or environment. The UIP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. The UIP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.
We intend UIPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new features, for collecting community technical input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Urbit. Because the UIPs are maintained as text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal.
There are three types of UIP:
- A Standards Track UIP describes any change that affects the way the Urbit OS or underlying language(s) work:
- Kernel: improvements to the interface of the Arvo kernel, its Vanes (kernel modules), the kernel's standard library Zuse, or the %base distribution that is included in the default installation of all new Urbit ships.
- Hoon: improvements that change the Hoon programming language or its standard library.
- Nock: improvements that change the Nock instruction set.
- A Process UIP describes a process surrounding Urbit or proposes a change to (or an event in) a process. Process UIPs are like Standards Track UIPs but apply to areas other than the Urbit protocol itself. They may propose an implementation, but not to Urbit's codebase; they often require community consensus; unlike Informational UIPs, they are more than recommendations, and users are typically not free to ignore them. Examples include procedures, guidelines, changes to the decision-making process, and changes to the tools or environment used in Urbit development. Any meta-UIP is also considered a Process UIP.
- An Informational UIP describes an Urbit design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the Urbit community, but does not propose a new feature. Informational UIPs do not necessarily represent Urbit community consensus or a recommendation, so users and implementers are free to ignore Informational UIPs or follow their advice.
It is highly recommended that a single UIP contain a single key proposal or new idea. The more focused the UIP, the more successful it tends to be.
An UIP must meet certain minimum criteria. It must be a clear and complete description of the proposed enhancement. The enhancement must represent a net improvement. The proposed implementation, if applicable, must be tested to the best of the author's ability.
Parties involved in the process are you, the champion or UIP author, the UIP editors, and the Urbit Core Developers.
Before you begin writing a formal UIP, you should vet your idea. Ask the Urbit community first if an idea is original to avoid wasting time on something that will be rejected based on prior research. We recommend beginning a conversation in the Forge group.
Once the idea has been vetted, your next responsibility will be to present (by means of an UIP) the idea to the reviewers and all interested parties, invite editors, developers, and the community to give feedback on the aforementioned channels. You should try and gauge whether the interest in your UIP is commensurate with both the work involved in implementing it and how many parties will have to conform to it. For example, backwards-incompatible modifications to the kernel can require significant implementation work for application developers to support the feature. Negative community feedback will be taken into consideration and may prevent your UIP from moving past the Draft stage.
Kernel UIPs always require galaxy deployment (currently via ~zod) and frequently require runtime support in order to be considered Final, so you will need to provide implementations that can be reviewed and merged in urbit/urbit and optionally urbit/vere.
The best way to get core developers to review your UIP is to discuss it in The Forge group and/or present it at a Core Architecture meeting. You can request to do so by posting a comment linking your UIP on a Core Architecture agenda GitHub Issue.
The Core Architecture call serves as a way for core developers to discuss the technical merits of UIPs and to coordinate UIP implementation for network upgrades. These calls generally result in a "rough consensus" around what UIPs should be implemented. This "rough consensus" rests on the assumptions that UIPs are technically sound.
In short, your role as the champion is to write the UIP using the style and format described below, shepherd the discussions in the appropriate forums, and build community consensus around the idea.
The following is the standardization process for all UIPs in all tracks:
Idea - An idea that is pre-draft. This is not tracked within the UIP Repository.
Draft - The first formally tracked stage of an UIP in development. An UIP is merged by an UIP Editor into the UIP repository when properly formatted.
Rejected - Core Developers have agreed that a UIP is not going to be pursued further. This state has finality and can no longer be resurrected using this UIP number. If the idea is pursued at later date it is considered a new proposal.
Review - An UIP Author marks an UIP as ready for and requesting Peer Review.
Last Call - This is the final review window for an UIP before moving to Final
. An UIP editor will assign Last Call
status and set a review end date (last-call-deadline
), typically 14 days later.
If this period results in necessary normative changes it will revert the UIP to Review
.
Final - This UIP represents the final standard. A Final UIP exists in a state of finality and should only be updated to correct errata and add non-normative clarifications.
A PR moving an UIP from Last Call to Final SHOULD contain no changes other than the status update. Any content or editorial proposed change SHOULD be separate from this status-updating PR and committed prior to it.
Stagnant - Any UIP in Draft
or Review
or Last Call
if inactive for a period of 6 months or greater is moved to Stagnant
. An UIP may be resurrected from this state by Authors or UIP Editors through moving it back to Draft
or it's earlier status. If not resurrected, a proposal may stay forever in this status.
Withdrawn - The UIP Author(s) have withdrawn the proposed UIP. This state has finality and can no longer be resurrected using this UIP number. If the idea is pursued at later date it is considered a new proposal.
Living - A special status for UIPs that are designed to be continually updated and not reach a state of finality. This includes most notably UIP-1.
Each UIP should have the following parts:
- Preamble - RFC 822 style headers containing metadata about the UIP, including the UIP number, a short descriptive title (limited to a maximum of 44 characters), a description (limited to a maximum of 140 characters), and the author details. Irrespective of the category, the title and description should not include UIP number. See below for details.
- Abstract - Abstract is a multi-sentence (short paragraph) technical summary. This should be a very terse and human-readable version of the specification section. Someone should be able to read only the abstract to get the gist of what this specification does.
- Motivation (optional) - A motivation section is critical for UIPs that want to change existing kernel interfaces. It should clearly explain why the existing interface is inadequate to address the problem that the UIP solves. This section may be omitted if the motivation is evident.
- Specification - The technical specification should describe the syntax, interface and semantics of any new feature. The specification should be detailed enough to allow for implementation in the OS and possible competing, interoperable implementations for any of the current runtimes (vere, ares).
- Rationale - The rationale fleshes out the specification by describing what motivated the design and why particular design decisions were made. It should describe alternate designs that were considered and related work. The rationale should discuss important objections or concerns raised during discussion around the UIP.
- Backwards Compatibility (optional) - All UIPs that introduce backwards incompatibilities must include a section describing these incompatibilities and their consequences. The UIP must explain how the author proposes to deal with these incompatibilities, and how developers can migrate the applications. This section may be omitted if the proposal does not introduce any backwards incompatibilities, but this section must be included if backward incompatibilities exist.
- Reference Implementation (optional) - An optional section that contains a reference/example implementation that people can use to assist in understanding or implementing this specification. This section may be omitted for all UIPs.
- Security Considerations (optional) - UIPs SHOULD contain a section that discusses the security implications/considerations relevant to the proposed change. Include information that might be important for security discussions, surfaces risks and can be used throughout the life-cycle of the proposal. E.g. include security-relevant design decisions, concerns, important discussions, implementation-specific guidance and pitfalls, an outline of threats and risks and how they are being addressed.
- Copyright Waiver - All UIPs must be in the public domain. The copyright waiver MUST link to the license file and use the following wording:
Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](../LICENSE.md).
UIPs should be written in markdown format. There is a template to follow.
Each UIP must begin with an RFC 822 style header preamble, preceded and followed by three hyphens (---
). This header is also termed "front matter" by Jekyll. The headers must appear in the following order.
uip
: UIP number (this is determined by the UIP editor)
title
: The UIP title is a few words, not a complete sentence
description
: Description is one full (short) sentence
author
: The list of the author's or authors' name(s) and/or username(s), or name(s) and email(s). Details are below.
status
: Draft, Rejected, Review, Last Call, Final, Stagnant, Withdrawn, Living
last-call-deadline
: The date last call period ends on (Optional field, only needed when status is Last Call
)
type
: One of Standards Track
, Process
, or Informational
category
: One of Kernel
, Hoon
, or Nock
(Optional field, only needed for Standards Track
UIPs)
created
: Date the UIP was created on
requires
: UIP number(s) (Optional field)
kelvins
: A list of all kelvins in effect when this UIP was deployed to the network, e.g. [[%nock 4] [%hoon 139] [%arvo 238] [%lull 324] [%zuse 413]]
(Optional field, only needed when status is Final
)
withdrawal-reason
: A sentence explaining why the UIP was withdrawn. (Optional field, only needed when status is Withdrawn
)
rejected-reason
: A sentence explaining why the UIP was rejected. (Optional field, only needed when status is Rejected
)
Headers that permit lists must separate elements with commas.
Headers requiring dates will always do so in the format of ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd).
The author
header lists the names, @p, email addresses or usernames of the authors/owners of the UIP. Those who prefer anonymity may use a @p or username only, or a first name and a username or @p. The format of the author
header value must be:
Random J. User <[email protected]>
or
Random J. User (@username)
or
Random J. User (@username) <[email protected]>
or
~sampel-palnet (@sampel-palnet)
if the email address and/or GitHub username is included, and
Random J. User
if neither the email address nor the GitHub username are given.
At least one author must use a GitHub username, in order to get notified on change requests and have the capability to approve or reject them.
While an UIP is a draft, a discussions-to
header will indicate the URL where the UIP is being discussed.
The preferred discussion URL is an issue in the Core Development PM repo. The URL cannot point to any URL which is ephemeral, and any URL which can get locked over time (i.e. Reddit topics).
The type
header specifies the type of UIP: Standards Track, Process, or Informational.
The category
header specifies the UIP's category. This is required for standards-track UIPs only.
The created
header records the date that the UIP was assigned a number. Both headers should be in yyyy-mm-dd format, e.g. 2001-08-14.
UIPs may have a requires
header, indicating the UIP numbers that this UIP depends on. If such a dependency exists, this field is required.
A requires
dependency is created when the current UIP cannot be understood or implemented without a concept or technical element from another UIP. Merely mentioning another UIP does not necessarily create such a dependency.
References to other UIPs should follow the format UIP-N
where N
is the UIP number you are referring to. Each UIP that is referenced in an UIP MUST be accompanied by a relative markdown link the first time it is referenced, and MAY be accompanied by a link on subsequent references. The link MUST always be done via relative paths so that the links work in this GitHub repository, forks of this repository, the main UIPs site, mirrors of the main UIP site, etc. For example, you would link to this UIP as ./uip-0001.md
.
Images, diagrams and auxiliary files should be included in a subdirectory of the assets
folder for that UIP as follows: assets/uip-N
(where N is to be replaced with the UIP number). When linking to an image in the UIP, use relative links such as ../assets/uip-0001/image.png
.
It occasionally becomes necessary to transfer ownership of UIPs to a new champion. In general, we'd like to retain the original author as a co-author of the transferred UIP, but that's really up to the original author. A good reason to transfer ownership is because the original author no longer has the time or interest in updating it or following through with the UIP process, or has fallen off the face of the 'net (i.e. is unreachable or isn't responding to email). A bad reason to transfer ownership is because you don't agree with the direction of the UIP. We try to build consensus around an UIP, but if that's not possible, you can always submit a competing UIP.
If you are interested in assuming ownership of an UIP, send a message asking to take over, addressed to both the original author and the UIP editor. If the original author doesn't respond to the email in a timely manner, the UIP editor will make a unilateral decision (it's not like such decisions can't be reversed :)).
The current UIP editors are:
- Josh Lehman (@jalehman)
- Ted Blackman (@belisarius222)
For each new UIP that comes in, an editor does the following:
- Read the UIP to check if it is ready: sound and complete. The ideas must make technical sense, even if they don't seem likely to get to final status.
- The title should accurately describe the content.
- Check the UIP for language (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.), markup (GitHub flavored Markdown), code style
If the UIP isn't ready, the editor will send it back to the author for revision, with specific instructions.
Once the UIP is ready for the repository, the UIP editor will:
- Assign an UIP number (generally the PR number, but the decision is with the editors)
- Merge the corresponding pull request
- Send a message back to the UIP author with the next step.
Many UIPs are written and maintained by developers with write access to the Urbit codebase. The UIP editors monitor UIP changes, and correct any structure, grammar, spelling, or markup mistakes we see.
The editors don't pass judgment on UIPs. We merely do the administrative & editorial part.
The title
field in the preamble:
- Should not include the word "standard" or any variation thereof; and
- Should not include the UIP's number.
The description
field in the preamble:
- Should not include the word "standard" or any variation thereof; and
- Should not include the UIP's number.
When referring to an UIP with a category
of ERC
, it must be written in the hyphenated form ERC-X
where X
is that UIP's assigned number. When referring to UIPs with any other category
, it must be written in the hyphenated form UIP-X
where X
is that UIP's assigned number.
UIPs are encouraged to follow RFC 2119 and RFC 8174 for terminology and to insert the following at the beginning of the Specification section:
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 and RFC 8174.
This document was derived heavily from Ethereum's EIP-1 written by Martin Becze, Hudson Jameson, et al., which was in turn derived from Bitcoin's BIP-0001 which in turn was derived from Python's PEP-0001. In many places text was simply copied and modified. Although the PEP-0001 text was written by Barry Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton, and David Goodger, they are not responsible for its use in the Urbit Improvement Process, and should not be bothered with technical questions specific to Urbit or the UIP. Please direct all comments to the UIP editors.
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.