Requests for Comments
A Request for Comments (RFC) is a record of discussion on an open-ended topic related to the design and implementation of the Noir, for which no immediate decision is required.
The purpose of an RFC is to serve as a historical record of a high-level discussion that might otherwise only be recorded in an ad-hoc way (for example, via gists or Google docs) that are difficult to discover for someone after the fact. An RFC may give rise to more specific architectural decisions for the Noir, but those decisions must be recorded separately in Architecture Decision Records (ADR).
As a rule of thumb, if you can articulate a specific question that needs to be answered, write an ADR. If you need to explore the topic and get input from others to know what questions need to be answered, an RFC may be appropriate.
RFC Content
An RFC should provide:
- A changelog, documenting when and how the RFC has changed.
- An abstract, briefly summarizing the topic so the reader can quickly tell whether it is relevant to their interest.
- Any background a reader will need to understand and participate in the substance of the discussion (links to other documents are fine here).
- The discussion, the primary content of the document.
The rfc-template.md file includes placeholders for these sections.