Proto H. Levkowetz
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Intended status: Informational A. Mankin
Expires: August 12, 2007 February 8, 2007
Requirements on I-D Tracker Extensions for Working Group Chairs
draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-tracker-ext-03
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Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
This document describes the changes required to make it possible for
working group chairs to update the I-D tracker during document
shepherding, after the request for publication. It also describes
additional requirements for the chairs to use the I-D tracker for
managing WG documents from their earliest stages. Having the tracker
support the working groups more fully is a primary benefit, but in
addition, this moves towards the goal of providing an integrated view
of document states from -00 to RFC publication.
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1. Introduction
In order to make it possible for working group chairs acting as
document shepherds to do the full duties of shepherding it is
necessary for them to be able to enter document state changes and
issue resolutions into the I-D tracker. However, at the time of
writing, only area directors have the necessary write access to the
tracker. In order to take over the full duties of shepherding,
sufficient write access has to be provided also for working group
chairs.
Another deficiency of the current I-D tracker is that although it
accurately reflects document states from the time publication has
been requested for a document, there is no state information
available for documents which have been adopted as working group
documents, but not yet submitted for publication. In order to make
it possible for the tracker to reflect this information, new states
and annotation possibilities are necessary, in addition to the
ability for working group chairs to change document state in the
tracker.
The need for new states also exist for documents which go through a
different publication process than that used for documents approved
by the IESG, such as IAB and IRTF documents. In order to do the
necessary updates for such documents, write access to the tracker
also needs to be provided to IAB and IRTF people. Specification of
additional states for IAB and IRTF documents is left out of this
document, and instead specified in
draft-ietf-proto-iab-irtf-tracker-ext.
Note that although the proposed changes introduce write access to the
tracker for groups of IETF participants which does not currently have
write access, such as working group chairs, they does not introduce
general write access to the tracker for everybody.
1.1. Terminology
In this document, several words are used to signify the requirements
of the specification. These words are often capitalised. The key
words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD",
"SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document
are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
The requirements in this document are specified as English phrases
ending with an "(R-nnn)" indication, where "nnn" is a unique
requirement number.
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2. I-D Tracker Write Access
Providing write access for working group chairs and other non-IESG
people to the tracker requires:
* Having a 'groups' attribute associated with each user. This
attribute should contain a list of groups of which the user is a
member (R-001).
* For the mentioned group attribute, there should at least be values
defined corresponding to 'AD', 'Chair', 'Shepherd', 'IAB' and
'IRTF', permitting per-group access control of actions and
features with this granularity (R-011).
* Identification of the actions and information which may require
verification of the user's access rights (R-002). Such actions
and information will be called 'restricted features' in the
following. Some known restricted features are:
- Requesting IETF last call
- Setting Document Approved states
- Access to the tool which places documents on the IESG Agenda
Access to the document comment log is not a restricted feature.
* An additional state table for WG state (Section 3.1), and
additional tables for WG state annotation tags (Section 3.2),
planned next state, and date of next state (Section 3.3) (R-010).
* Addition of checks for appropriate group membership in the tracker
code before the code provides access to restricted features
(R-003).
* Assignment of appropriate group memberships to existing users
(R-004).
* Establishment of new users, with appropriate group memberships and
passwords (R-005).
3. New Document States
In order to be able to provide appropriate document state indications
for documents which are working group documents, and have not yet
been submitted for publication as RFC, one additional state variable
(see Section 3.1), and two additional fields (see Section 3.2 and
Section 3.4) is needed in the tracker. These are described in the
following sections.
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3.1. WG Document States
A new state variable or field to hold WG Document states will be
added to the tracker. This field will track the working group state
of the document, and will be updated by the working group chairs once
a document has been adopted as a WG document.
The reason why this is a different field rather than the existing
IESG state field is that there are cases where a document has been
passed to the IESG, and has reached a certain point in the IESG's
handling, but is then sent back to the WG for a brief time. It is
beneficial to be able to keep the IESG state visible, rather than
have it overwritten by the WG state.
Defined WG States:
* Candidate WG Document
This document is under consideration for becoming a working group
document. A document being in this state does not imply any
consensus, and does not imply any precedence or selection. It's
simply a way to indicate that somebody has asked for a document to
be considered for adoption.
(R-009)
* Active WG Document
This document has been adopted by a working group, and is being
actively developed.
(R-006)
* Parked WG Document
This document has lost its author or editor, is waiting for
another document to be written, or cannot currently be worked on
by the working group for some other reason.
(R-007)
* In WG Last Call
A working group last call has been issued for this document, and
is in progress. When the last call has completed, a document
would normally enter either the "Active WG Document" or the
"Waiting for Document Shepherd Write-up" state, depending on the
nature of the WG Last Call comments received. In both cases, an
annotation of "Revised ID Needed" might also be appropriate, based
on the comments received.
(R-008)
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* Waiting for Document Shepherd Writeup
The Working group last call has been completed, and the document
is waiting for the Document Shepherd to complete his write-up.
(R-030)
The naming of this state is very close to one of the current IESG
states, "Waiting for Document Writeup". This IESG state should be
renamed to "Waiting for Area Director Writeup" for clarity
(R-031).
* Submitted WG Document
The document has been submitted to the IESG for publication (and
not returned to the WG for further action). The document may be
under consideration by the IESG, it may have been approved and in
the RFC Editor's queue, or it may have been published as an RFC;
this state doesn't distinguish between different states occurring
after the document has left the working group.
(R-008)
* Dead WG Document
This document has been a WG document, but has been killed or
abandoned. This does not have to be a final state; if there is
consensus in the workgroup, a Dead document can be resurrected.
(R-025)
* Not a WG Document
This document is not a WG document. This means that the IESG
state for the document is either "I-D Exists" or "AD is watching".
The document may have various other states set, such as various
IAB or IRTF document states; but if so it is not reflected in the
WG document state which simply will indicate "Not a WG Document".
(R-014)
3.2. WG State Annotation Tags
The use of a separate tagging or annotation field makes it possible
to capture a number of specific conditions for a draft, where these
conditions can exist in parallel. These conditions also does not
really change the WG state of the document, but are still useful to
show for instance what action is needed next for the document. The
tracker should provide a means to set one or more of these annotation
tags for a document, for instance by use of a multiple-choice
selection box in a web interface (R-012).
These annotation tags are similar to the existing sub-states of the
IESG state, but may be a more appropriate mechanism to show
additional information which is not directly related to the document
state.
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Defined WG state annotation tags (R-013):
* "Editor Needed"
* "Held for Dependency on other Document"
* "Awaiting MIB Doctor Review"
* "Awaiting Cross-Area Review"
* "Awaiting Security Review"
* "Awaiting Other Reviews"
* "Revised ID Needed"
* "Doc Shepherd Followup"
* "Other - see Comment Log"
When a document is in the WG state "In WG Last Call" with the
annotation "Revised ID Needed", the WG annotation tag "Doc Shepherd
Followup" should be automatically assigned by the tracker when the
document is updated (R-023). This is analogous to the automatic
transition described below in Section 4.
The annotation tag "Revised ID Needed" should be automatically
cleared when a new revision of a document is made available (R-024).
3.3. Next WG Document State Field
As part of the WG status handling, a field should be available to
indicate the next planned state of a draft, and the planned date for
that state. The Next WG Document State field has the same possible
values as the WG Document State (Section 3.1) field (R-027).
The Next Doc-State Date field is not a free-text field, but uses a
well-known date representation form (R-028). (Example:
"2007-01-19".) Any web-page providing input to this field should
accept input in the form of a number of days and / or a pull-down
list with a number of choices such as for instance "1 Day", "2 Days",
... "1 Week", "2 Weeks", ... "1 Month", "2 Months" etc. (R-029).
This information is then converted to the chosen date format and
stored. The Next Doc-State Date field may also be left blank.
3.4. Intended Status Field
As part of the WG status handling, a field should be available to
indicate the intended status of a draft, with the possible values
being (R-026):
* "Informational"
* "Experimental"
* "Best Current Practice"
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* "Proposed Standard"
* "Draft Standard"
* "Full Standard"
* "Historic"
When possible (for instance, when a draft is submitted through
automated mechanisms, and contains a line in the first page document
header which indicates the intended status, such as for instance
"Intended status: Informational") this field should be automatically
set by the submission tool.
3.5. Document States for External Bodies
It would be highly desirable to have document states also for RFC
editor queue states and IANA queue states. These could be
automatically set through interaction with RFC Editor and IANA
support tools, or could be fetched from the RFC Editor state
information (now available in XML format) and IANA state information
when available. That work is however out of scope for this document,
but will be considered as part of future tracker enhancements.
4. Modification of Existing Fields
One existing sub-state in the tracker should be modified to reflect
the role of the WG document shepherds.
The IESG sub-state "AD Followup" is defined as generic and may be
used for many purposes by an Area Director. However, the tracker
automatically assigns this sub-state when a document which has been
in the "Revised ID Needed" sub-state is updated. The "AD Followup"
sub-state shall continue to exist for the first purpose, but when a
working group document is in "IESG Evaluation - Revised ID Needed"
and an update arrives, it shall receive an automatic state change to
a new sub-state instead: "Doc Shepherd Followup" (R-022). Non-WG
documents continue to change state to "AD Followup" as before.
5. IANA Considerations
This document does not require any new number assignments from IANA,
and does not define any new numbering spaces to be administered by
IANA.
RFC-Editor: Please remove this section before publication.
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6. Security Considerations
This document does not propose any new internet mechanisms, and has
no security implications for the internet.
However, security of tracker access and security of private tracker
comments need to be safeguarded, which requires care in handling,
assignment and re-assignment of passwords. Auto-generated passwords
MUST be generated with adequate strength, and if it is possible for
users to change their passwords, strength assessment of the new
password SHOULD be provided.
The mechanism to limit access to private comments and restricted
actions MUST be tested and verified as functional after all the
changes have been coded which are needed to implement the
functionality described in this document, and before the changes are
made available to the new set of users.
7. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
Authors' Addresses
Henrik Levkowetz
Ericsson
Torsgatan 71
Stockholm
SWEDEN
Phone: +46 708 32 16 08
Email: henrik@levkowetz.com
Allison Mankin
Phone: +1 301 728 7199
Email: mankin@psg.com
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