This repo is a place to propose and track upcoming changes to AWS CDK, jsii, and other related projects. It also is a great place to learn about the current and future state of the libraries and to discover projects for contribution.
See The RFC Life Cycle to learn more about the states of existing proposals.
This document is a lot of information about process thats meant to help guide. It is not a set of rules that need to be strictly applied. It is designed to help contributors (and thats you!) become more involved with the tools that they rely on. All efforts to contribute are encouraged and appreciated.
An RFC is a document that proposes and details a change or addition to the CDK, JSII, and other related tooling. It also is a process for reviewing and discussing the proposal and tracking its implementation. "Request for Comments" means a request for discussion and oversight about the future of the CDK and JSII from contributors and users. It is an open forum for suggestions, questions, and feedback.
The process is intended to be as lightweight and reasonable as possible 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.
The RFC process itself is subject to changes as dictated by the core team and the community. Proposals can include proposed changes to the RFC process itself to better serve contributors.
Contributions are welcome from anyone in a variety of ways.
Comments are welcome on proposal tracking issues and RFC pull requests. This can be to show support for a feature that you're really interested in having, or to point out possible red flags or downsides to the change.
If a feature or change you think is needed hasn't been proposed, create a new tracking issue.
If you're interested in helping to design an existing proposal, comment on the tracking issue and get started on an RFC document.
Once a proposal has been reviewed and is ready, contributions to its implementation are greatly appreciated. We try to estimate the effort needed to implement a proposal. If you're looking for a good introductory project, look for proposals that are labeled "ready" and "effort/small".
You should consider using this process if you intend to make "substantial" changes to AWS CDK, JSII, or related tools. Some examples that would benefit from an RFC are:
- Any change to existing APIs that could break existing code.
- The removal of existing features or public APIs.
- The introduction of new idiomatic usage or conventions, even if they do not include code changes to CDK or JSII themselves.
- Changes to the documented contribution workflow.
- Features that cross multiple construct libraries.
- Additions or changes to framework capabilities.
- Additions or changes to formal specifications like cloud assembly, tree.json, JSII, etc.
The RFC process is a great opportunity to get more eyeballs on your proposal before it becomes a part of a released version of CDK/JSII. Quite often, even proposals that seem "obvious" can be significantly improved once a wider group of interested people have a chance to weigh in.
The RFC process can also be helpful to encourage discussions about a proposed feature as it is being designed, and incorporate important constraints into the design while it's easier to change, before the design has been fully implemented.
If you submit a pull request to implement a new major feature without going through the RFC process, it may be closed with a polite request to submit an RFC first.
Some changes do not require an RFC:
- Bugfixes for known issues.
- Additions only likely to be noticed by other developers of CDK/JSII, invisible to users of CDK/JSII.
- Additions of missing L1 or L2 constructs. Unless the service and/or constructs are especially complex or intentionally diverge from existing api design best practices.
If you're not sure whether your change requires an RFC, feel free to create an issue and ask.
In short, to get a major feature added to CDK/JSII, one usually first gets the RFC merged into the RFC repo as a markdown file. At that point the RFC is 'ready' and may be implemented with the goal of eventual inclusion into CDK/JSII.
- Create a tracking issue for the proposed feature if one doesn't already exist. Use the tracking issue template as a guide. If a tracking issue already exists, make sure to update it and assign it to let others know you're working on a proposal.
- Fork the RFC repo.
- Copy
0000-template.mdtotext/<rfc#>-<my-feature>.mdwhere <rfc#> is the tracking issue number and<my-feature>is the rfc title. - Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details: We welcome all honest efforts to contribute..
- Submit a pull request with the title
RFC: <rfc#> <title>where <rfc#> is the tracking issue number and title is the name of the proposal. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedback from the core team and the larger community, and the author should be prepared to make revisions in response.- Update the tracking issue with a link to the RFC PR.
- 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.
- Eventually, the team will decide whether the RFC is a candidate for inclusion in CDK/JSII.
- RFCs that are candidates for inclusion in CDK/JSII will enter a "final comment period" lasting 3 calendar days. The beginning of this period will be signaled by a team member adding a comment and label on the RFCs pull request.
- An RFC can be modified based upon feedback from the team and community. Significant modifications may trigger a new final comment period.
- An RFC may be rejected by the team after public discussion has settled and comments have been made summarizing the rationale for rejection. A member of the team should then close the RFCs associated pull request.
- An RFC may be accepted at the close of its final comment period. A team member will merge the RFCs associated pull request, at which point the RFC will become 'ready'.
If the submitter is someone from our CDK community (i.e., not core team member), a core team member will be assigned to 'champion' each proposal. They will generally be the ones updating the RFCs state in the tracking issue as it moves through the process. They can decide when a final comment period is triggered.
On the other hand, if the submitter is a core team member, they will identify another core team member, with consent, as their 'champion'. The champion would be the first contact for brainstorming, process and reviews. The core team would defer to the champion to do the first few rounds of reviews, after which the rest of the team should be engaged.
An RFC flows through the following states.
- Proposed - A tracking issue has been created with a basic outline of the proposal.
- Pending - An RFC document has been written with a detailed design and a PR is under review.
- Final Comment Period - A core team member has been assigned to oversee the
proposal and at least 1 core team member has approved the RFC PR.
- An RFC may be reverted or closed during final comment period if a member of the core team or community raises a previously unforeseen issue that is cause for concern.
- Ready - Final comment period is complete and the PR is merged.
- Resolved - The implementation is complete and merged across appropriate repositories.
Once an RFC becomes ready, then authors may implement it and submit the feature as a pull request to the aws-cdk or related repos. Becoming 'ready' is not a rubber stamp, and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; it does mean that the core team has agreed to it in principle and are amenable to merging it.
Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted and is 'ready' implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor whether anybody is currently working on it.
Modifications to RFCs marked 'ready' can be done in followup PRs. 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; therefore we try to keep each RFC document somewhat in sync with the feature as planned, tracking such changes via followup pull requests to the document.
Each week the team will attempt to review some set of open RFC pull requests. Comments and feedback on proposals in any state of the process are welcome and encouraged.
Every RFC that we accept should have a core team champion, who will represent the feature and its progress. When an RFC is merged, we try to label the tracking with an estimation of effort required for implementation. These are general "t-shirt size" estimates e.g. small, medium, large.
While the author of an RFC (like any other developer) is welcome to offer an implementation for review after the RFC has been accepted, they have no obligation to do so.
If you are interested in working on the implementation for an RFC marked 'ready', but cannot determine if someone else is already working on it, feel free to ask (e.g. by leaving a comment on the associated tracking issue).
AWS CDK's RFC process owes its inspiration to the Yarn RFC process, Rust RFC process, React RFC process, and Ember RFC process