YANG deVELpment PrOCEss & maintenance (VELOCE)
draft-boucadair-veloce-yang-05
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Mohamed Boucadair | ||
| Last updated | 2025-09-18 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-boucadair-veloce-yang-05
Network Working Group M. Boucadair
Internet-Draft Orange
Intended status: Standards Track 18 September 2025
Expires: 22 March 2026
YANG deVELpment PrOCEss & maintenance (VELOCE)
draft-boucadair-veloce-yang-05
Abstract
This document describes a YANG deVELpment PrOCEss & maintenance
(VELOCE) that is more suitable for the development of YANG modules or
YANG modules update within the IETF.
Discussion Venues
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/boucadair/draft-boucadair-veloce-yang.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 22 March 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. VELOCE Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. IETF-hosted Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
RFCs are not suited for documenting and maintaining YANG modules.
However, implementers/vendors are looking for reference models and
sufficiently stable models to refer to. To that aim, this document
proposes a new approach for documenting IETF-endorsed YANG modules.
Guidance for writing YANG modules are discussed in
[I-D.ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis]. Guidelines related to code components
(Section 3.2 of [I-D.ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis]) or citations to
references listed in the YANG module do not apply for VELOCE.
This document mainly focuses on IETF modules. Note that
[I-D.ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis] includes provisons for IANA-maintained
modules to not be included in RFCs:
| The authors MUST include a note to the RFC Editor requesting that
| the appendix be removed before publication as RFC and that RFC
| IIII is replaced with the RFC number that is assigned to the
| document. Initial versions of IANA-maintained modules that are
| published in RFCs may be misused despite the appropriate language
| to refer to the IANA registry to retrieve the up-to-date module.
| This is problematic for interoperability, e.g., when values are
| deprecated or are associated with a new meaning.
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2. Conventions and Definitions
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
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. VELOCE Procedure
The following procedure is followed when a WG adopts a new YANG
module or update to an existing YANG module:
* A new repository (Section 4) MUST be created by the WG Chairs
following the procedure in Section 3.2 of [RFC8874] to maintain
the YANG Module, with the appropriate CI/CD YANG validation in
place.
- The same procedure for managing WG documents (e.g., assign
editors) applies for managing YANG modules (Section 6.1 of
[RFC2418]).
- Refer also to Section 3.3 of [RFC8874] for considerations
related to granting WG participants write and administrators
right.
- Other administrative policies are defined in [RFC8875].
- A release tagging mechanism should be defined to track the
intermediate versions referenced by WG I-Ds and by the RFC,
once published.
* Contributing methods to YANG module (including issues handling and
merge procedure) are similar to those defined in Section 4 of
[RFC8874]. A procedure to assessing consensus is discussed in
Section 7 of [RFC8874].
* The WG (WG Chairs) MUST seek in a timely manner after the adoption
of the YANG module for the publication of an RFC that describes
the initial module objectives and, more importantly, registers the
URI in the "ns" subregistry within the "IETF XML Registry"
[RFC3688] and the YANG module in the "YANG Module Names"
subregistry [RFC6020] within the "YANG Parameters" registry.
Unless we update these rules as well, the publication of the
initial RFC is required per Section 14 of [RFC6020], especially
the following:
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"There are no initial assignments.
For allocation, RFC publication is required"
* The YANG module MUST NOT be inserted in the document; instead a
link to the above repository MUST be included.
* Bis versions of the initial RFC MAY be considered to document
major changes and their rationale. Such a decision is left to the
WG. The RFC update is scoped to the narrative part describing the
updates. WGs may decide to maintain an adopted YANG module in the
IETF repository but never seek for an RFC publication of major
module revisions.
* Bis versions of the initial RFC should be developed by the same WG
which was responsible for producing the intial RFC. If the
responsible WG concluded, the alternative WG should be consulted
with the ADs.
* All adopted IETF modules are also mirrored in a common IETF
repository.
4. IETF-hosted Repository
It is RECOMMENDED that IETF self-hosted repositories are used.
Integration using third-party hosted repositories MAY be used for
experimentation purposes.
DISCUSSION: Include a recommendation about the hosting. IANA or
some IETF gitlab are examples of self-hosting. Example of third-
part hosted facility is GitHub.
5. Operational Considerations
The VELOCE approach is meant to address some of operational issues
encountered using current YANG development approach within the IETF.
Specification, VELOCE ambitions to:
* Ease integration for operators by providing readily-available YANG
code in a well-identified location.
* Encourage an iterative approach that would fit most of operators
needs, rather than waiting for a "perfect" version that solves
every deployment case.
* Catalyst to produce fully-validated modules in a timely manner.
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* Ease reuse/leveraging by other organizations and hopefully avoid
redundant efforts.
* Welcome contributors from the operators community who are more
familiar with software development, not only with specification
development.
6. Security Considerations
The same considerations discussed in Section 10 of [RFC8874] apply
here.
7. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis]
Bierman, A., Boucadair, M., and Q. Wu, "Guidelines for
Authors and Reviewers of Documents Containing YANG Data
Models", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
netmod-rfc8407bis-28, 5 June 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-netmod-
rfc8407bis-28>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, DOI 10.17487/RFC2418,
September 1998, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2418>.
[RFC6020] Bjorklund, M., Ed., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for
the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6020,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6020, October 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6020>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
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[RFC8874] Thomson, M. and B. Stark, "Working Group GitHub Usage
Guidance", RFC 8874, DOI 10.17487/RFC8874, August 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8874>.
[RFC8875] Cooper, A. and P. Hoffman, "Working Group GitHub
Administration", RFC 8875, DOI 10.17487/RFC8875, August
2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8875>.
8.2. Informative References
[RFC3688] Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3688, January 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3688>.
Acknowledgments
This draft is triggered by the discussion in NEMOPS IAB workshop.
Thanks to Kristian Larsson, Italo Busi, Michael Richardson, and Qin
Wu for the comments.
Author's Address
Mohamed Boucadair
Orange
Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com
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