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SIP Purpose and Guidelines

What is a SIP?​

SIP stands for Subjektify Improvement Proposal. A SIP is a design document providing information to the Subjektify community, or describing a new feature for Subjektify or its processes or environment. The SIP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. The SIP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.

SIP Rationale​

We intend for SIPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new features, for collecting community technical input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Subjektify. Because the SIPs are maintained as text files in a versioned repository, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal.

For Subjektify implementers, SIPs are a convenient way to track the progress of their implementation. Ideally each implementation maintainer would list the SIPs that they have implemented. This will give end users a convenient way to know the current status of a given implementation or library.

SIP Types​

There are three primary types for a SIP

Standard SIP​

A Standards SIP describes any change that affects most or all Subjektify implementations, such as—a change to the Subjekt interface definition language, a change in the command-line interface or its default plugins, proposed application standards/conventions, or any change or addition that affects the interoperability of applications using Subjektify. Standards SIPs consist of three parts—a design document, an implementation, and (if warranted) an update to the formal specification. Furthermore, Standards SIPs can be broken down into the following categories

Core​

Core SIPs involve improvements that require changes to the core functionalities of Subjektify, including changes to the command-line interface, default plugins, and other essential features that affect the core behavior of the Subjektify platform.

Interface​

Interface SIPs involve improvements to the interface specifications, such as changes to the Subjekt interface definition language and other user-facing interfaces. These are intended to enhance the user experience and ensure consistent communication between different components of Subjektify.

SRC​

SRC SIPs are akin to ERCs (Ethereum Request for Comments) and involve changes to runtime components of Subjektify, including subjects and compositions. These proposals focus on defining standards and conventions for creating and interacting with subjects within the Subjektify ecosystem.

Meta SIP​

A Meta SIP describes a process surrounding Subjektify or proposes a change to (or an event in) a process. Process SIPs are like Standard SIPs but apply to areas other than the Subjektify ecosystem itself. They may propose an implementation, but not to Subjektify's codebase; they often require community consensus; unlike Informational SIPs, they are more than recommendations, and users are typically not free to ignore them. Examples include procedures, guidelines, changes to the decision-making process, and changes to the tools or environment used in Subjektify development.

Informational SIP​

An Informational SIP describes a Subjektify design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the Subjektify community, but does not propose a new feature. Informational SIPs do not necessarily represent Subjektify community consensus or a recommendation, so users and implementers are free to ignore Informational SIPs or follow their advice.

info

It is highly recommended that a single SIP contain a single key proposal or new idea. The more focused the SIP, the more successful it tends to be. A change to one client doesn’t require an SIP; a change that affects multiple clients, or defines a standard for multiple apps to use, does.

A SIP must meet certain minimum criteria. It must be a clear and complete description of the proposed enhancement. The enhancement must represent a net improvement. The proposed implementation, if applicable, must be solid and must not complicate the protocol unduly.

SIP Workflow​

Leading a SIP​

Parties involved in the process are you, the champion or SIP author, the SIP editors, and the Subjektify Core Developers.

Before you begin writing a formal SIP, you should vet your idea. Ask the Subjektify community first if an idea is original to avoid wasting time on something that will be rejected based on prior research. Once the idea has been vetted, your next responsibility will be to present (by means of an SIP) the idea to the reviewers and all interested parties, invite editors, developers, and the community to give feedback.

You should try and gauge whether the interest in your SIP is commensurate with both the work involved in implementing it and how many parties will have to conform to it. For example, the work required for implementing a Core SIP will be much greater than for an SRC and the SIP will need sufficient interest from the Subjektify core teams. Negative community feedback will be taken into consideration and may prevent your SIP from moving past the Draft stage.

Core SIPs​

For Core SIPs, given that they require implementations to be considered Final (see “SIPs Process” below), you will need to either provide an implementation for clients or convince clients to implement your SIP.

In short, your role as the champion is to write the SIP using the style and format described below, lead the discussions in the appropriate forums, and build community consensus around the idea.

SIP Process​

The following is the standardization process for all SIPs in all tracks:

SIP Process

  • Idea: An idea that is pre-draft. This is not tracked within the SIP Repository.
  • Draft: The first formally tracked stage of an SIP in development. An SIP is merged by an SIP Editor into the SIP repository when properly formatted.
  • Review: A SIP Author marks an SIP as ready for and requesting Peer Review.
  • Last Call: This is the final review window for an SIP before moving to Final. An SIP editor will assign Last Call status and set a review end date, typically 14 days later.
  • Final: This SIP represents the final standard. A Final SIP exists in a state of finality and should only be updated to add non-normative clarifications.
  • Stagnant: Any SIP in Draft or Review or Last Call if inactive for a period of 6 months or greater is moved to Stagnant. An SIP may be resurrected from this state by Authors or SIP Editors through moving it back to Draft or it’s earlier status. If not resurrected, a proposal may stay forever in this status.
  • Withdrawn: The SIP Author(s) have withdrawn the proposed SIP. This state has finality and can no longer be resurrected using this SIP number. If the idea is pursued at a later date it is considered a new proposal.
  • Living: A special status for SIPs that are designed to be continually updated and not reach a state of finality. This includes most notably SIP-1.

What belongs in a successful SIP?​

Each SIP should have the following parts:

  • Preamble: RFC 822 style headers containing metadata about the SIP, including the SIP number, a short descriptive title (limited to a maximum of 44 characters), a description (limited to a maximum of 140 characters), and the author details. Irrespective of the category, the title and description should not include the SIP number. See below for details.
  • Abstract: A multi-sentence (short paragraph) technical summary. This should be a very terse and human-readable version of the specification section. Someone should be able to read only the abstract to get the gist of what this specification does.
  • Motivation (optional): A motivation section is critical for SIPs that want to change the Subjektify protocol. It should clearly explain why the existing protocol specification is inadequate to address the problem that the SIP solves. This section may be omitted if the motivation is evident.
  • Specification: The technical specification should describe the syntax and semantics of any new feature. The specification should be detailed enough to allow competing, interoperable implementations for any of the current Subjektify platforms.
  • Rationale: The rationale fleshes out the specification by describing what motivated the design and why particular design decisions were made. It should describe alternate designs that were considered and related work, e.g., how the feature is supported in other languages. The rationale should discuss important objections or concerns raised during discussion around the SIP.
  • Backwards Compatibility (optional): All SIPs that introduce backwards incompatibilities must include a section describing these incompatibilities and their consequences. The SIP must explain how the author proposes to deal with these incompatibilities. This section may be omitted if the proposal does not introduce any backwards incompatibilities, but this section must be included if backward incompatibilities exist.
  • Test Cases (optional): Test cases for an implementation are mandatory for SIPs that are affecting consensus changes. Tests should either be inlined in the SIP as data (such as input/expected output pairs) or included in ../assets/sip-###/<filename>. This section may be omitted for non-Core proposals.
  • Reference Implementation (optional): An optional section that contains a reference/example implementation that people can use to assist in understanding or implementing this specification. This section may be omitted for all SIPs.
  • Security Considerations: All SIPs must contain a section that discusses the security implications/considerations relevant to the proposed change. Include information that might be important for security discussions, surfaces risks, and can be used throughout the lifecycle of the proposal. E.g., include security-relevant design decisions, concerns, important discussions, implementation-specific guidance and pitfalls, an outline of threats and risks and how they are being addressed. SIP submissions missing the "Security Considerations" section will be rejected. A SIP cannot proceed to status "Final" without a Security Considerations discussion deemed sufficient by the reviewers.
  • Copyright Waiver: All SIPs must be in the public domain. The copyright waiver MUST link to the license file and use the following wording: Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://github.com/subjektify/sips/blob/main/LICENSE).

SIP Formats and Templates​

EIPs should be written in markdown format. There is a template to follow.

SIP Header Preamble​

Each EIP must begin with an RFC 822 style header preamble, preceded and followed by three hyphens (---). This header is also termed “front matter” by Jekyll. The headers must appear in the following order.

Linking to External Resources​

Other than the specific exceptions listed below, links to external resources SHOULD NOT be included. External resources may disappear, move, or change unexpectedly.

SIP Editors​

The current SIP editors are:

  • Mohamed Amer (@mohamedamer)

If you would like to become an SIP editor, please check SIP-5069.

History​

This document was derived heavily from Ethereum's EIP-0001 written by Alex Beregszaszi which in turn was derived from Bitcoin's BIP-0001 written by Amir Taaki which in turn was derived from Python's PEP-0001. In many places text was simply copied and modified.

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

Citation​

Please cite this document as:

Mohamed Amer (mohamedamer@subjektify.dev), "SIP-1: SIP Purpose and Guidelines", Subjektify Improvement Proposals, July 2024. Available: https://sips.subjektify.dev/docs/sips/sip-1