Many changes, including bug fixes and documentation improvements can be implemented and reviewed via the normal GitHub pull request workflow.
Some changes though are "substantial", and we ask that these be put through a bit of a design process and produce a consensus among the Nix community.
This process is followed when one intends to make "substantial" changes to the Nix ecosystem. What constitutes a "substantial" change is evolving based on community norms, but may include the following.
Certain changes do not require an RFC:
Pull requests that contain any of the aforementioned 'substantial' changes may be closed if there is no RFC connected to the proposed changes.
A team of people defined by RFC 36 and stays consistent until the team members are changed via a follow-up RFC. This committee is responsible for forming an RFC Shepherd team from the available nominations on each RFC. This team also names the leader of the Shepherd team. This has to happen within 1 week after the PR has been opened. Until then the Steering Committee is responsible for guiding the discussion. In case of the Shepherding Team not doing its work the Steering Committee shall encourage them or step in and assign new Shepherds. They also are in charge of merging accepted and rejected RFCs. Generally by these expectations they should find time to meet once a week for about an hour.
They have no special responsibility with regard to the content of an RFC, they can weigh in on them, the same as any other community member, but are only in charge of:
A team of 3-4 community members defined unanimously by the RFC Steering Committee, responsible for accepting or rejecting a specific RFC. This team is created per RFC from community members nominated in the discussion on that RFC.
This team should be people who are very familiar with the main components touched by the RFC. The author cannot be part of the Shepherd Team. In addition, at most half of the Shepherd Team can be part of the RFC Steering Committee.
The responsibility of the team is to guide the discussion as long as it is constructive, new points are brought up and the RFC is iterated on and from time to time summarise the current state of discussion. If this is the case no longer, then the Shepherd Team shall step in with a motion for FCP.
The person in charge of the RFC process for a specific RFC, and responsible for ensuring the process is followed in a timely fashion. The Shepherd Leader has no special responsibility with regard to moving an undecided Shepherd Team to a certain decision.
A period of ten calendar days, which will be called by the Shepherd Team after the RFC has received ample discussion and enough of the tradeoffs have been discussed. The Shepherd Team will propose to either accept or reject the RFC after the FCP.
In short, to get a major change included in Nix or Nixpkgs, one must
first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file under the
rfcs
directory. At that point the RFC is accepted and may be implemented
with the goal of eventual inclusion into Nix or Nixpkgs.
graph TD
Start((Start)) --> Draft
Draft -->|Ready for Review| Discuss
style Draft fill:#008,color:#FFF
Discuss[Discuss and Refine]
Discuss ---> |On Hold| Draft
Discuss --> |Can't Find Shepherds| NoShepherds
Discuss --> |Motion for FCP| FCP
NoShepherds[Closed - Lack of Interest]:::closed
NoShepherds --> |Renewed Interest| Discuss
FCP[Final Coment Phase]
FCP --> |FCP Canceled| Discuss
FCP --> |Accept| Merged
FCP --> |Reject| Rejected
Merged
style Merged fill:#080,color:#FFF
Rejected[Closed - Rejected]:::closed
Withdrawn[Closed - Withdrawn]:::closed
Discuss & Draft --->|Author Withdraws| Withdrawn
classDef closed fill:#800,color:#FFF
Ideally every RFC will complete review and be accepted or rejected. Unfortunately this can not always be the case. Much like in distributed systems, timeouts are needed to avoid spending resources monitoring tasks that will never complete.
If the author is unable or unwilling to update the RFC in a timely fashion they may mark an RFC as "On Hold" to indicate that the RFC should not continue to be pushed forward for the time being.
The author can mark the PR as a Draft and the existing label status: on hold can be applied to the PR by the NixOS RFC Steering Committee for tracking reasons.
RFCs in Draft status will be completely ignored by the NixOS RFC Steering Committee. It is also expected that community members will largely refrain from review until the author has indicated that the RFC is once again ready.
At any point of time the author can either remove the Draft status from the RFC to indicate that they believe that it is ready for additional review and that they have the time to continue the RFC process. Or they can close the RFC to indicate that this RFC is unlikely to to ever move forward.
If an RFC is unable to find an adequate number of shepherds after 1 month of being open, the following message will be added to the PR to suggest ways to find more support:
RFCSC:
This RFC has not acquired enough shepherds. This typically shows lack of interest from the community. In order to progress [a full shepherd team is required](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/#shepherd-team). Consider trying to raise interest by [posting in Discourse](https://discourse.nixos.org/), [talking in Matrix](https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org) or reaching out to people that you know.
If not enough shepherds can be found in the next month we will close this RFC until we can find enough interested participants. The PR can be reopened at any time if more shepherd nominations are made.
[See more info on the Nix RFC process here](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/README.md)
If another month elapses after and a shepherd team still hasn't been assembled the following message will be posted, the status: insufficient interest
label will be added and the issue will be closed.
RFCSC: This RFC is being closed due to lack interest. If enough shepherds are found this issue can be reopened. If you don't have permission to reopen please [open an issue for the NixOS RFC Steering Committee](https://github.com/NixOS/rfc-steering-committee/issues/new) linking to this PR.
Most RFCs describe changes that eventually need to be implemented, usually in form of pull requests against one of the Nix* repositories. Ideally, implementations are ready to be merged alongside the RFC when it gets accepted. Other times, implementation happens only after the RFC gets accepted. Being accepted is not a rubber stamp, and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; it does mean that in principle all the major stakeholders have agreed to the feature and are amenable to merging it. In general though this means that the implementation will be merged as long as there are no substantial technical objections to the implementation.
Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anything about whether a Nix/Nixpkgs developer has been assigned the task of implementing the feature. While it is not necessary that the author of the RFC also write the implementation, it is by far the most effective way to see an RFC through to completion: authors should not expect that other project developers will take on responsibility for implementing their accepted feature.
RFC documents are intended to be seen as the documentation of a decision and a snapshot of a moment in time, rather than a specification-like normative document. Think more of a Matrix Spec Proposal and less like an IETF RFC. Therefore, once accepted, RFCs should generally not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments (via a follow-up pull request). It is the general expectation that any information intended to be normative and "outlive" the initial RFC process should live outside of the RFC document, mostly in documentation and code. These may be subject to change as usual, and of course any "substantial" changes will again require a new RFC. Usually there is no need to update the original RFC to keep it up with updates on the implementation.
The current members of the RFC Steering Committee can be seen on the NixOS website.
All contributions are licensed by their respective authors under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 License.