The "RFC" (request for comments) process helps us think through bigger changes to Tenx in a collaborative way. It's our way of making sure we're all on the same page when it comes to the direction of the project.

Most changes to Tenx, including bug fixes, small features, docs improvements can just go through the usual GitHub pull request workflow.

But for the bigger, more substantial changes, we'd like to chat about them first and get everyone's thoughts before diving into implementation.

A hastily-proposed RFC can hurt its chances of acceptance. Low quality proposals, proposals for previously-rejected features, or those that don't fit into the near-term roadmap, may be quickly rejected, which can be demotivating for the unprepared contributor. Laying some groundwork ahead of the RFC can make the process smoother.

Although there is no single way to prepare for submitting an RFC, it is generally a good idea to pursue feedback from other project developers beforehand, to ascertain that the RFC may be desirable; having a consistent impact on the project requires concerted effort toward consensus-building.

The most common preparations for writing and submitting an RFC include talking the idea over on our Discord server.

As a rule of thumb, receiving encouraging feedback from long-standing project developers is a good indication that the RFC is worth pursuing.

In short, to get a major feature added to Tenx, one must first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file. At that point the RFC is "active" and may be implemented with the goal of eventual inclusion into Tenx.

• Fork the Tenx RFCs repo
• Copy 000-template.md to text/000-my-feature.md (where "my-feature" is descriptive). Don't assign an RFC number yet; this is going to be the PR number and we'll rename the file accordingly if the RFC is accepted.
• Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details: RFCs that do not present convincing motivation, demonstrate lack of understanding of the design's impact, or are disingenuous about the drawbacks or alternatives tend to be poorly-received.
• Submit a pull request. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedback from the larger community, and the author should be prepared to revise it in response.
• Now that your RFC has an open pull request, use the issue number of the PR to rename the file: update your 000- prefix to that number. Also update the "RFC PR" link at the top of the file.
• Build consensus and integrate feedback. RFCs that have broad support are much more likely to make progress than those that don't receive any comments. Feel free to reach out to the RFC assignee in particular to get help identifying stakeholders and obstacles.
• The team will discuss the RFC pull request, as much as possible in the comment thread of the pull request itself. Offline discussion will be summarized on the pull request comment thread.
• RFCs rarely go through this process unchanged, especially as alternatives and drawbacks are shown. You can make edits, big and small, to the RFC to clarify or change the design, but make changes as new commits to the pull request, and leave a comment on the pull request explaining your changes. Specifically, do not squash or rebase commits after they are visible on the pull request.
• At some point, someone from the team will suggest we move to "final comment period" (FCP), along with a recommendation (merge, close, or postpone).
  • We do this when we feel like we've talked through the main trade-offs and are ready to make a call. We don't need everyone to agree—that's usually impossible anyway. But we do want to make sure the reasoning is clear and there isn't strong pushback from the community.
  • For RFCs with lots of discussion, we might post a summary comment first to capture where things stand.
  • Before we actually start FCP, all team members need to sign off. This is often when team members really dig into the RFC for the first time.
• The FCP lasts ten calendar days, so that it is open for at least 5 business days. It is also advertised widely, e.g. in the Discord server. This way all stakeholders have a chance to lodge any final objections before a decision is reached.
• In most cases, the FCP period is quiet, and the RFC is either merged or closed. However, sometimes substantial new arguments or ideas are raised, the FCP is canceled, and the RFC goes back into development mode.

Once an RFC becomes "active" then authors may implement it and submit the feature as a pull request to the Tenx repo. Being "active" doesn't guarantee your feature will definitely make it in, it just means we all think it's a good idea in principle and we're open to merging it when it's ready.

Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted and is "active" implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anything about whether a Tenx 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.

Modifications to "active" RFCs can be done in follow-up pull requests. We strive to write each RFC in a manner that it will reflect the final design of the feature; but the nature of the process means that we cannot expect every merged RFC to actually reflect what the end result will be at the time of the next major release.

In general, once accepted, RFCs should not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments. More substantial changes should be new RFCs, with a note added to the original RFC. Exactly what counts as a "very minor change" is up to the team to decide.

While the RFC pull request is up, the team may schedule meetings with the author and/or relevant stakeholders to discuss the issues in greater detail, and in some cases the topic may be discussed at a team meeting. In either case a summary from the meeting will be posted back to the RFC pull request.

The team makes final decisions about RFCs after the benefits and drawbacks are well understood. These decisions can be made at any time, but the team will regularly issue decisions. When a decision is made, the RFC pull request will either be merged or closed. In either case, if the reasoning is not clear from the discussion in thread, the team will add a comment describing the rationale for the decision.

Some accepted RFCs represent vital features that need to be implemented right away. Other accepted RFCs can represent features that can wait until some arbitrary developer feels like doing the work. Every accepted RFC has an associated issue tracking its implementation in the Tenx repository; thus that associated issue can be assigned a priority via the triage process that the team uses for all issues in the Tenx repository.

The author of an RFC is not obligated to implement it. Of course, the RFC author (like any other developer) is welcome to post an implementation for review after the RFC has been accepted.

If you are interested in working on the implementation for an "active" RFC, but cannot determine if someone else is already working on it, feel free to ask (e.g. by leaving a comment on the associated issue).

Some RFC pull requests are tagged with the "postponed" label when they are closed (as part of the rejection process). An RFC closed with "postponed" is marked as such because we want neither to think about evaluating the proposal nor about implementing the described feature until some time in the future, and we believe that we can afford to wait until then to do so. Historically, "postponed" was used to postpone features until after 1.0. Postponed pull requests may be re-opened when the time is right. We don't have any formal process for that, you should ask members of the relevant team.

Usually an RFC pull request marked as "postponed" has already passed an informal first round of evaluation, namely the round of "do we think we would ever possibly consider making this change, as outlined in the RFC pull request, or some semi-obvious variation of it." (When the answer to the latter question is "no", then the appropriate response is to close the RFC, not postpone it.)

The process is intended to be as lightweight as reasonable for the present circumstances. As usual, we are trying to let the process be driven by consensus and community norms, not impose more structure than necessary.

This process is inspired by Rust's RFCs process