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title authors creation-date last-updated status
Tekton Enhancement Proposal Process
@vdemeester
2020-03-10
2020-06-11
implemented

TEP-0001: Tekton Enhancement Proposal Process

Table of Contents

Summary

A standardized development process for Tekton is proposed in order to

  • provide a common structure and clear checkpoints for proposing changes to Tekton
  • ensure that the motivation for a change is clear
  • allow for the enumeration stability milestones and stability graduation criteria
  • persist project information in a Version Control System (VCS) for future Tekton users and contributors
  • support the creation of high value user facing information such as:
    • an overall project development roadmap
    • motivation for impactful user facing changes
  • ensure community participants are successfully able to drive changes to completion across one or more releases while stakeholders are adequately represented throughout the process

This process is supported by a unit of work called a Tekton Enhancement Proposal (TEP). A TEP attempts to combine aspects of the following:

  • feature, and effort tracking document
  • a product requirements document
  • design document

into one file which is created incrementally in collaboration with one or more Working Groups (WGs).

This process does not block authors from doing early design docs using any means. It does not block authors from sharing those design docs with the community (during Working groups, on Slack, GitHub, …).

This process acts as a requirement when a design docs is ready to be implemented or integrated in the tektoncd projects. In other words, a change that impacts other tektoncd projects or users cannot be merged if there is no TEP associated with it. Bug fixes and small changes like refactoring that do not affect the APIs (CRDs, REST APIs) are not concerned by this. Fixing the behaviour of a malfunctioning part of the project does not require a TEP.

This TEP process is related to

  • the generation of an architectural roadmap
  • the fact that the proposed feature is still undefined
  • issue management
  • the difference between an accepted design and a proposal
  • the organization of design proposals

This proposal attempts to place these concerns within a general framework.

Motivation

For cross project or new project proposal, an abstraction beyond a single GitHub issue seems to be required in order to understand and communicate upcoming changes to the Tekton community.

In a blog post describing the road to Go 2, Russ Cox explains

that it is difficult but essential to describe the significance of a problem in a way that someone working in a different environment can understand

As a project, it is vital to be able to track the chain of custody for a proposed enhancement from conception through implementation.

Without a standardized mechanism for describing important enhancements, our talented technical writers and product managers struggle to weave a coherent narrative explaining why a particular release is important. Additionally, for critical infrastructure such as Tekton, adopters need a forward looking road map in order to plan their adoption strategy.

Before this proposal, there is no a standard way or template to create project enhancements, only suggestions on proposing a feature. We rely on documents hosted on Google docs, without a standard template explaining the change. Once a proposal is done, via a design docs, it tends to be hard to follow what happens with the proposal: updates on the proposal in reaction to comments, state of the proposal (when is it accepted, or rejected).

The purpose of the TEP process is to reduce the amount of "tribal knowledge" in our community. This is done by putting in place a gate (submitting and getting a TEP merged) that marks a decision after having been discussed during video calls, on mailing list and other means. This process aims to enhance communication and discoverability. The TEP process is intended to create high quality uniform design and implementation documents for WGs to deliberate.

A TEP is broken into sections which can be merged into source control incrementally in order to support an iterative development process. A number of sections are required for a TEP to get merged in the proposed state (see the different states in the TEP Metadata). The other sections can be updated after further discussions and agreement from the Working Groups.

Stewardship

The following DACI model indentifies the responsible parties for TEPs:

Workstream Driver Approver Contributor Informed
TEP Process Stewardship Tekton Contributors Tekton Governing members Tekton Contributors Community
Enhancement delivery Enhancement Owner Project(s) Owners Enhancement Implementer(s) (may overlap with Driver) Community

In a nutshell, this means:

  • Updates on the TEP process are driven by contributors and approved by the tekton governing board.
  • Enhancement proposal are driven by contributors, and approved by the related project(s) owners.

Reference-level explanation

What type of work should be tracked by a TEP

The definition of what constitutes an "enhancement" is a foundational concern for the Tekton project. Roughly any Tekton user or operator facing enhancement should follow the TEP process. If an enhancement would be described in either written or verbal communication to anyone besides the TEP author or developer, then consider creating a TEP. This means any change that may impact any other community project in a way should be proposed as a TEP. Those changes could be for technical reasons, or adding new features, or deprecating then removing old features.

Similarly, any technical effort (refactoring, major architectural change) that will impact a large section of the development community should also be communicated widely. The TEP process is suited for this even if it will have zero impact on the typical user or operator.

Let's list a few enhancements that happened before this process (or are currently happening), that would have required a TEP:

Let's also list some changes or features that are not yet in progress and could benefit from a TEP:

  • Pipeline Resources re-design, a.k.a. bring PipelineResource to v1beta1
  • Bring Conditions to v1beta1 or rewrite them differently
  • Automated releases across projects
  • CI setup using Tekton on Tekton (aka the /dogfooding/ project)
  • Serving new API version (v1beta2, v1, …) on tektoncd/pipeline
  • Beta APIs on tektoncd/triggers
  • Local-to-Tekton feature on tektoncd/cli (aka use local source to execute a Pipeline in the cluster)

Finally, let's take a look at some examples of changes in tektoncd/pipeline that would, most likely not require a TEP.

Project creations or project promotion from the experimental project would also fall under the TEP process, deprecating the current project proposal process (but not the project requirements).

TEP Template

The template for a TEP is precisely defined here

It's worth noting, the TEP template used to track API changes will likely have different subsections than the template for proposing governance changes. However, as changes start impacting other WGs or the larger developer communities outside of a WG, the TEP process should be used to coordinate and communicate.

TEP Metadata

There is a place in each TEP for a YAML document that has standard metadata. This will be used to support tooling around filtering and display. It is also critical to clearly communicate the status of a TEP.

Metadata items:

  • title Required
    • The title of the TEP in plain language. The title will also be used in the TEP filename. See the template for instructions and details.
  • status Required
    • The current state of the TEP.
    • Must be one of proposed, implementable, implemented,withdrawn, or replaced.
  • authors Required
    • A list of authors for the TEP. This is simply the github ID. In the future we may enhance this to include other types of identification.
  • creation-date Required
    • The date that the TEP was first submitted in a PR.
    • In the form yyyy-mm-dd
    • While this info will also be in source control, it is helpful to have the set of TEP files stand on their own.
  • last-updated Optional
    • The date that the TEP was last changed significantly.
    • In the form yyyy-mm-dd
  • see-also Optional
    • A list of other TEPs that are relevant to this TEP.
    • In the form TEP-123
  • replaces Optional
    • A list of TEPs that this TEP replaces. Those TEPs should list this TEP in their superseded-by.
    • In the form TEP-123
  • superseded-by Optional
    • A list of TEPs that supersede this TEP. Use of this should be paired with this TEP moving into the Replaced status.
    • In the form TEP-123

TEP Workflow

A TEP has the following states

  • proposed: The TEP has been proposed and is actively being defined. This is the starting state while the TEP is being fleshed out and actively defined and discussed.
  • implementable: The approvers have approved this TEP for implementation.
  • implemented: The TEP has been implemented and is no longer actively changed. From that point on, the TEP should be considered read-only.
  • withdrawn: The TEP has been withdrawn by the authors or by the community on agreement with the authors.
  • replaced: The TEP has been replaced by a new TEP. The superseded-by metadata value should point to the new TEP.

The workflow starts with a PR that introduces a new TEP in proposed state. When the PR is merged, it means the project owners acknowledge this is something we might want to work on but the proposal needs to be discussed and detailed before it can be accepted. The review cycle on the initial PR should be short.

Once the TEP is proposed, the owners of the TEP (or someone else on their behalf) shall submit a new PR that changes the status to implementable, and present the TEP at a relevant working group, or via the mailing list.

The discussion on the TEP shall be tracked on the PR, regardless of the forum where it happens. We might need more information about the impact on users, or some time to socialize it with the Working Groups, etc. This state doesn't prevent using tektoncd/experimental to experiment and gather feedback.

The outcome may be that the TEP is approved, and moves to implementable, or rejected, and moves to withdrawn. In case the TEP is withdrawn it's best practise to update it with the reason for withdrawal.

A TEP can be moved to the implementable state if it doesn't need any more discussion and is approved as is.

See Examples to see examples of TEP workflow on use cases.

Git Implementation

TEPs are checked into the community repo under the /teps directory.

New TEPs can be checked in with a file name in the form of draft-YYYYMMDD-my-title.md. As significant work is done on the TEP, the authors can assign a TEP number. No other changes should be put in that PR so that it can be approved quickly and minimize merge conflicts. The TEP number can also be done as part of the initial submission if the PR is likely to be uncontested and merged quickly.

Prior Art

The TEP process as proposed was essentially adapted from the Kubernetes KEP process, which itself is essentially stolen from the Rust RFC process which itself seems to be very similar to the Python PEP process

Examples

Let's give some example of workflow to give the reader a better understanding on how and when a TEP should be created and how they are managed across time.

These are examples, and do not necessarily reflect what happened, or what will happen on the particular subject they are about. They are here to give more context and ideas on different situations that could arise while following the TEP process.

Share Task and Pipeline as OCI artifact

See the following links for more context on this feature:

  1. An initial design doc is crafted (let's imagine it is Tekton OCI Image Catalog). An experimental project has already been created and a proof-of-concept demoed during a working group. The next step is to create a TEP (and continue work on the proof-of-concept if need be).

  2. A TEP is created with the content of the design document.

  3. It is approved with a proposed state, which means:

    • We acknowledge this is important for the project, and needs to be worked on
    • It needs some work and discussion based on the initial proposal

  4. The TEP is being disscussed during Working Group(s) — it can be the main one, or a specific one like the API Working Group.

    During those discussion it is clear that some work needs to be done:

    • Define a Spec for the OCI image (layers, metadata, configuration) The experimental project can be used to demo and validate that spec.
    • Once the spec is agreed on, a new TEP can be created to discuss the support of this Spec in tekton projects (pipeline, cli, …). Having a seperated TEP from the Spec TEP makes a clear distinction between the Spec and its implementation in the tekton projects.
    • A new TEP can be created to discuss adding support for referencing Task and Pipeline through alternative means other than in clusters (OCI image is one, using Git or an HTTP url are others). This is not covered by the rest of the flow, it's here just to give an example that discussion on a TEP might lead to the creation of new TEP.*

    The next actions are :

    • Update the current TEP to define the spec (same steps as above applies). A name is choosen for those: Tekton Bundles.
    • Create a new TEP on implementing Tekton Bundles in tektoncd projects (pipeline and cli)

  5. The current TEP, defining the spec, is approved and marked as implemented. In this case implemented means it is available in the documentation in tektoncd (most likely on the tektoncd/pipeline repository)

We are now switching to the "Implementing Tekton Bundles" TEP.

  1. It is proposed based on a design doc (discussed during working groups)
  2. The "Implementing Tekton Bundle" gets approved, and as it has been discussed during working groups, it is ready for implementation, so it gets merged directly into implementable.
  3. Work is happening in tektoncd/pipeline (and tektoncd/cli in parallel) on implementing it.
  4. Implementation is done, we update the TEP to put it in implemented state.

PipelineResource re-design

See the following links for more context on this feature:

  1. A TEP is proposed to add extensibility to PipelineResources. This is based on Tekton Pipeline Resource Extensibility that has been discussed among the community. The initial idea is to make the PipelineResource extensible and not be limited to built-in options.

  2. The TEP is accepted as proposed, which means:

    • We acknowledge this is important for the project, and needs to be worked on
    • It needs some work and discussion based on the initial proposal

  3. The TEP gets discussed at length during a special Working Group. After multiple iterations, it becomes clear that:

    • The current PipelineResource design has some limits and problems
    • The current proposed TEP is way too complicated
    • A life is possible without using PipelineResource, some experimentation needs to be done around this

    The next action are:

    • Mark this TEP as withdrawn, we acknoledge it is not the way to go. When marking this as withdrawn, add the reason why.
    • Conduct an experiment on not using PipelineResource
    • Acknowledge that the PipelineResource needs a full re-design (and thus removing it from the beta API for now)

  4. From the conducted experiment on "a life without PipelineResource", two concepts are being discussed:

    • Workspace : to share data between tasks
    • Results : to share results between tasks

    A TEP for each is created, approved and implemented.

  5. Design discussion and docs are being created to re-design PipelineResources using the above new concept. It gets discussed in a different working group. A TEP is created to signify that design work is ongoing. The TEP is marked as proposed.

  6. A design is agreed on after working group discussions. This new TEP gets updated, and is marked as implementable.

  7. Work can start on the new PipelineResource design

  8. Once the work around this is done, the TEP gets updated to implemented state.

Later, some enhancements to the PipelineResource are proposed. Those will result in new TEPs.

Drawbacks

Any additional process has the potential to engender resentment within the community. There is also a risk that the TEP process as designed will not sufficiently address the scaling challenges we face today. PR review bandwidth is already at a premium and we may find that the TEP process introduces an unreasonable bottleneck on our development velocity.

The centrality of Git and GitHub within the TEP process also may place too high a barrier to potential contributors, however, given that both Git and GitHub are required to contribute code changes to Tekton today perhaps it would be reasonable to invest in providing support to those unfamiliar with this tooling. It also makes the proposal document more accessible than what it is before this proposal, as you are required to be part of tekton-users@ or tekton-dev@ google groups to see the design docs.

Unresolved Questions

  • How reviewers and approvers are assigned to a TEP
  • Example schedule, deadline, and time frame for each stage of a TEP
  • Communication/notification mechanisms
  • Review meetings and escalation procedure