I consider Rust’s RFC process one of our great accomplishments, but it’s no secret that it has a few flaws. At its best, the RFC offers an opportunity for collaborative design that is really exciting to be a part of. At its worst, it can devolve into bickering without any real motion towards consensus. If you’ve not done so already, I strongly recommend reading aturon’s excellent blog posts on this topic.

The RFC process has also evolved somewhat organically over time. What began as “just open a pull request on GitHub” has moved into a process with a number of formal and informal stages (described below). I think it’s a good time for us to take a step back and see if we can refine those stages into something that works better for everyone.

This blog post describes a proposal that arose over some discussions at the Mozilla All Hands. This proposal represents an alternate take on the RFC process, drawing on some ideas from the TC39 process, but adapting them to Rust’s needs. I’m pretty excited about it.

Important: This blog post is meant to advertise a proposal about the RFC process, not a final decision. I’d love to get feedback on this proposal and I expect further iteration on the details. In any case, until the Rust 2018 Edition work is complete, we don’t really have the bandwidth to make a change like this. (And, indeed, most of my personal attention remains on NLL at the moment.) If you’d like to discuss the ideas here, I opened an internals thread.

TL;DR

The TL;DR of the proposal is as follows:

Explicit RFC stages. Each proposal moves through a series of explicit stages.

Each proposal moves through a series of explicit stages. Each RFC gets its own repository. These are automatically created by a bot. This permits us to use GitHub issues and pull requests to split up conversation. It also permits a RFC to have multiple documents (e.g., a FAQ).

These are automatically created by a bot. This permits us to use GitHub issues and pull requests to split up conversation. It also permits a RFC to have multiple documents (e.g., a FAQ). The repository tracks the proposal from the early days until stabilization. Right now, discussions about a particular proposal are scattered across internals, RFC pull requests, and the Rust issue tracker. Under this new proposal, a single repository would serve as the home for the proposal. In the case of more complex proposals, such as impl Trait , the repository could even serve as the home multiple layered RFCs.

Right now, discussions about a particular proposal are scattered across internals, RFC pull requests, and the Rust issue tracker. Under this new proposal, a single repository would serve as the home for the proposal. In the case of more complex proposals, such as , the repository could even serve as the home multiple layered RFCs. Prioritization is now an explicit part of the process. The new process includes an explicit step to move from the “spitballing” stage (roughly “Pre-RFC” today) to the “designing” stage (roughly “RFC” today). This step requires both a team champion, who agrees to work on moving the proposal through implementation and towards stabilization, and general agreement from the team. The aim here is two-fold. First, the teams get a chance to provide early feedback and introduce key constraints (e.g., “this may interact with feature X”). Second, it provides room for a discussion about prioritization: there are often RFCs which are good ideas, but which are not a good idea right now, and the current process doesn’t give us a way to specify that.

The new process includes an explicit step to move from the “spitballing” stage (roughly “Pre-RFC” today) to the “designing” stage (roughly “RFC” today). This step requires both a team champion, who agrees to work on moving the proposal through implementation and towards stabilization, and general agreement from the team. The aim here is two-fold. First, the teams get a chance to provide early feedback and introduce key constraints (e.g., “this may interact with feature X”). Second, it provides room for a discussion about prioritization: there are often RFCs which are good ideas, but which are not a good idea right now, and the current process doesn’t give us a way to specify that. There is more room for feedback on the final, implemented design. In the new process, once implementation is complete, there is another phase where we (a) write an explainer describing how the feature works and (b) issue a general call for evaluation. We’ve done this before – such as cramertj’s call for feedback on impl Trait , aturon’s call to benchmark incremental compilation, or alexcrichton’s push to stabilize some subset of procedural macros – but each of those was an informal effort, rather than an explicit part of the RFC process.

The current process

Before diving into the new process, I want to give my view of the current process by which an idea becomes a stable feature. This goes beyond just the RFC itself. In fact, there are a number of stages, though some of them are informal or sometimes skipped:

Pre-RFC (informal): Discussions take place – often on internals – about the shape of the problem to be solved and possible proposals.

Discussions take place – often on internals – about the shape of the problem to be solved and possible proposals. RFC: A specific proposal is written and debated. It may be changed during this debate as a result of points that are raised. Steady state: At some point, the discussion reaches a “steady state”. This implies a kind of consensus – not necessarily a consensus about what to do , but a consensus on the pros and cons of the feature and the various alternatives. Note that reaching a steady state does not imply that no new comments are being posted. It just implies that the content of those comments is not new. Move to merge: Once the steady state is reached, the relevant team(s) can move to merge the RFC. This begins with a bunch of checkboxes, where each team member indicates that they agree that the RFC should be merged; in some cases, blocking concerns are raised (and resolved) during this process. FCP: Finally, once the team has assented to the merge, the RFC enters the Final Comment Period (FCP). This means that we wait for 10 days to give time for any final arguments to arise.

A specific proposal is written and debated. It may be changed during this debate as a result of points that are raised. Implementation: At this point, a tracking issue on the Rust repo is created. This will be the new home for discussion about the feature. We can also start writing code, which lands under a feature gate. Refinement: Sometimes, after implementation the feature, we find that the original design was inconsistent, in which case we might opt to alter the spec. Such alterations are discussed on the tracking issue – for significant changes, we will typically open a dedicated issue and do an FCP process, just like with the original RFC. A similar procedure happens for resolving unresolved questions.

At this point, a tracking issue on the Rust repo is created. This will be the new home for discussion about the feature. We can also start writing code, which lands under a feature gate. Stabilization: The final step is to move to stabilize. This is always an FCP decision, though the precise protocol varies. What I consider Best Practice is to create a dedicated issue for the stabilization: this issue should describe what is being stabilized, with an emphasis on (a) what has changed since the RFC, (b) tests that show the behavior in practice, and (c) what remains to be stabilized. (An example of such an issue is #48453, which proposed to stabilize the ? in main feature.)

Proposal for a new process

The heart of the new proposal is that each proposal should go through a series of explicit stages, depicted graphically here (you can also view this directly on Gooogle drawings, where the oh-so-important emojis work better):

You’ll notice that the stages are divided into two groups. The stages on the left represent phases where significant work is being done: they are given “active” names that end in “ing”, like spitballing, designing, etc. The bullet points below describe the work that is to be done. As will be described shortly, this work is done on a dedicated repository, by the community at large, in conjunction with at least one team champion.

The stages on the right represent decision points, where the relevant team(s) must decide whether to advance the RFC to the next stage. The bullet points below represent the questions that the team must answer. If the answer is Yes, then the RFC can proceed to the next stage – note that sometimes the RFC can proceed, but unresolved questions are added as well, to be addressed at a later stage.

Repository per RFC

Today, the “home” for an RFC changes over the course of the process. It may start in an internals thread, then move to the RFC repo, then to a tracking issue, etc. Under the new process, we would instead create a dedicated repository for each RFC. Once created, the RFC would serve as the “main home” for the new proposal from start to finish.

The repositories will live in the rust-rfcs organization. There will be a convenient webpage for creating them; it will create a repo that has an appropriate template and which is owned by the appropriate Rust team, with the creator also having full permissions. These repositories would naturally be subject to Rust’s Code of Conduct and other guidelines.

Note that you do not have to seek approval from the team to create a RFC repository. Just like opening a PR, creating a repository is something that anyone can do. The expectation is that the team will be tracking new repositories that are created (as well as those seeing a lot of discussion) and that members of the team will get involved when the time is right.

The goal here is to create the repository early – even before the RFC text is drafted, and perhaps before there exists a specific proposal. This allows joint authorship of RFCs and iteration in the repository.

In addition to create a “single home” for each proposal, having a dedicated RFC allows for a number of new patterns to emerge:

One can create a FAQ.md that answers common questions and summarizes points that have already reached consensus.

that answers common questions and summarizes points that have already reached consensus. One can create an explainer.md that documents the feature and explains how it works – in fact, creating such docs is mandatory during the “implementing” phase of the process.

that documents the feature and explains how it works – in fact, creating such docs is mandatory during the “implementing” phase of the process. We can put more than one RFC into a single repository. Often, there are complex features with inter-related (but distinct) aspects, and this allows those different parts to move through the stabilization process at a different pace.

The main RFC repository

The main RFC repository (named rust-rfcs/rfcs or something like that)

would no longer contain content on its own, except possibly the final draft of each RFC text. Instead, it would primarily serve as an index into the other repositories, organized by stage (similar to the TC39 proposals repository).

The purpose of this repository is to make it easy to see “what’s coming” when it comes to Rust. I also hope it can serve as a kind of “jumping off point” for people contributing to Rust, whether that be through design input, implementation work, or other things.

Team champions and the mechanics of moving an RFC between stages

One crucial role in the new process is that of the team champion. The team champion is someone from the Rust team who is working to drive this RFC to completion. Procedurally speaking, the team champion has two main jobs. First, they will give periodic updates to the Rust team at large of the latest developments, which will hopefully identify conflicts or concerns early on.

The second job is that team champions decide when to try and move the RFC between stages. The idea is that it is time to move between stages when two conditions are met:

The discussion on the repository has reached a “steady state”, meaning that there do not seem to be new arguments or counterarguments emerging. This sometimes also implies a general consensus on the design, but not always: it does however imply general agreement on the contours of the design space and the trade-offs involved.

There are good answers to the questions listed for that stage.

The actual mechanics of moving an RFC between stages are as follows. First, although not strictly required, the team champion should open an issue on the RFC repository proposing that it is time to move between stages. This issue should contain a draft of the report that will be given to the team at large, which should include summary of the key points (pro and con) around the design. Think of like a summary comment today. This issue can go through an FCP period in the same way as today (though without the need for checkmarks) to give people a chance to review the summary.

At that point, the team champion will open a PR on the main repository ( rust-rfcs/rfcs ). This PR itself will not have a lot of content: it will mostly edit the index, moving the PR to a new stage, and – where appropriate – linking to a specific revision of the text in the RFC repository (this revision then serves as “the draft” that was accepted, though of course further edits can and will occur). It should also link to the issue where the champion proposed moving to the next stage, so that the team can review the comments found there.

The PRs that move an RFC between stages are primarily intended for the Rust team to discuss – they are not meant to be the source of sigificant discussion, which ought to be taking place on the repository. If one looks at the current RFC process, they might consist of roughly the set of comments that typically occur once FCP is proposed. The teams should ensure that a decision (yay or nay) is reached in a timely fashion.

Finding the best way for teams to govern themselves to ensure prompt feedback remains a work in progress. The TC39 process is all based around regular meetings, but we are hoping to achieve something more asynchronous, in part so that we can be more friendly to people from all time zones, and to ease language barriers. But there is still a need to ensure that progress is made. I expect that weekly meetings will continue to play a role here, if only to nag people.

Making implicit stages explicit

There are two new points in the process that I want to highlight. Both of these represents an attempt to take “implicit” decision points that we used to have and make them more explicit and observable.

The Proposal point and the change from Spitballing to Designing

The very first stage in the RFC is going from the Spitballing phase to the Designing phase – this is done by presenting a Proposal. One crucial point is that there doesn’t have to be a primary design in order to present a proposal. It is ok to say “here are two or three designs that all seem to have advantages, and further design is needed to find the best approach” (often, that approach will be some form of synthesis of those designs anyway).

The main questions to be answered at the proposal have to do with motivation and prioritization. There are a few questions to answer:

Is this a problem we want to solve? And, specifically, is this a problem we want to solve now ?

Do we think we have some realistic ideas for solving it? Are there major things that we ought to dig into?

Are there cross-cutting concerns and interactions with other features? It may be that two features which are individually quite good, but which – taken together – blow the language complexity budget. We should always try to judge how a new feature might affect the language (or libraries) as a whole. We may want to extend the process in other ways to make identification of such “cross-cutting” or “global” concerns more first class.



The expectation is that all major proposals need to be connected to the roadmap. This should help to keep us focused on the work we are supposed to be doing. (I think it is possible for RFCs to advance that are not connected to the roadmap, but they need to be simple extensions that could effectively work at any time.)

There is another way that having an explicit Proposal step addresses problems around prioritization. Creating a Proposal requires a Team Champion, which implies that there is enough team bandwidth to see the project through to the end (presuming that people don’t become champions for more than a few projects at a time). If we find that there aren’t enough champions to go around (and there aren’t), then this is a sign we need to grow the teams (something we’ve been trying hard to do).

The Proposal point also offers a chance for other team members to point out constraints that may have been overlooked. These constraints don’t necessarily have to derail the proposal, they may just add new points to be addressed during the Designing phase.

Another new addition to the process here is the Evaluation phase. The idea here is that, once implementation is complete, we should do two things:

Write up an explainer that describes how the feature works in terms suitable for end users. This is a kind of “preliminary” documentation for the feature. It should explain how to enable the feature, what it’s good for, and give some examples of how to use it. For libraries, the explainer may not be needed, as the API docs serve the same purpose. We should in particular cover points where the design has changed significantly since the “Draft” phase.

Propose the RFC for Candidate status. If accepted, we will also issue a general call for evaluation. This serves as a kind of “pre-stabilization” notice. It means that people should go take the new feature for a spin, kick the tires, etc. This will hopefully uncover bugs, but also surprising failure modes, ergonomic hazards, or other pitfalls with the design. If any significant problems are found, we can correct them, update the explainer, and repeat until we are satisfied (or until we decide the idea isn’t going to work out).

As I noted earlier, we’ve done this before, but always informally:

Once the evaluation phase seems to have reached a conclusion, we would move to stabilize the feature. The explainer docs would then become the preliminary documentation and be added to a kind of addendum in the Rust book. The docs would be expected to integrate the docs into the book in smoother form sometime after synchronization.

Conclusion

As I wrote before, this is only a preliminary proposal, and I fully expect us to make changes to it. Timing wise, I don’t think it makes sense to pursue this change immediately anyway: we’ve too much going on with the edition. But I’m pretty excited about revamping our RFC processes both by making stages explicit and adding explicit repositories.

I have hopes that we will find ways to use explicit repositories to drive discussions towards consensus faster. It seems that having the ability, for example, to document “auxiliary” documents, such as lists of constraints and rationale, can help to ensure that people’s concerns are both heard and met.

In general, I would also like to start trying to foster a culture of “joint ownership” of in-progress RFCs. Maintaining a good RFC repository is going to be a fair amount of work, which is a great opportunity for people at large to pitch in. This can then serve as a kind of “mentoring on ramp” getting people more involved in the lang team. Similarly, I think that having a list of RFCs that are in the “implementation” phase might be a way to help engage people who’d like to hack on the compiler.

Please leave comments in the internals thread for this post.

Credit where credit is due

This proposal is heavily shaped by the TC39 process. This particular version was largely drafted in a big group discussion with wycats, aturon, ag_dubs, steveklabnik, nrc, jntrnr, erickt, and oli-obk, though earlier proposals also involved a few others.

(I made various simplifications shortly after publishing, aiming to keep the length of this blog post under control and remove what seemed to be somewhat duplicated content.)