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Implementation Decisions

A repository for all concrete decisions made about how to implement the cardano blockchain. This repository contains all the technical details and improvements that are needed for the developers. The repository contains git submodules that pin down specific versions of the formal specifications which these concrete technical decisions refer to. Changes to this need to be reflected in the different documents.

The "RFC" (request for comments) process is intended to provide a consistent and controlled path for new features to enter the blockchain and standard APIs, so that all stakeholders can be confident about the direction the blockchain is evolving in. It's also intended as an explicit list of concrete decisions that are outside the scope of the abstract specifications, and therefore the weight of the decision making should lie with the party making the proposal (who will more than likely be involved in a concrete implementation at the time of making it).

When to write a proposal

Currently we only accept proposals and comments from within the IOHK organization.

Proposals are to be made if:

  1. The formal specification is too vague and a concrete decision needs to be taken. Example: it is said the we take an index idx from the set of Idx. However it doesn't specify wether it is acceptable to have negative indices or if it is bounded (32bits? 64bits?), of if it is from 0 or from 1. A proposal can be made to pin this down and guarantee that we are all talking about the same thing.
  2. The current blockchain needs to include new features in order to implement the new feature defined by the formal spec. This needs to be documented here too.
  3. An improvement to the current implementation needs to be made. For example one could propose an improvement to the way we serialize blocks.

The process

  1. fork this repository;
  2. Copy <XXX-template.md> to text/0000-my-feature.md (where "my-feature" is descriptive. don't assign an RFC number yet).
  3. Fill in the RFC;
  4. Submit a pull request and fill in the RFC PR: section in <./XXXX-template.md>. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedback, and the author should be prepared to revise it in response
  5. The owners of this repository will orchestrate the review process. They will follow the comments and will direct the conversation toward consensus. If no consensus can be reached in a timely manner they may: close the PR or apply any changes they believe to be necessary before merging the PR.

Guidelines for formal-specifications writers

Writers of formal-specifications referred in this document should check that when these specifications are updated, all changes affecting RFC's in this repository should be accounted for. In practical terms this means that if a change in the specifications affects a previous RFC the writer should:

  • submit a new RFC which refers to the RFC that the changes in the spec is affecting.
  • specify whether the previous RFC is rendered obsolete by the new RFC, or whether the latter is just an addendum to the former.
  • update the version of the specification pinned in the git submodules.

License

This repository is currently in the process of being licensed under either of

Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) at your option.

Contributions

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.