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A few months back when I announced in one of our planning updates that we were freezing the DIP queue to focus on stabilization, I noted that the DIP process was going to get an overhaul. I've since learned that this message didn't stick, so I'll paste here what I said then.
The DIP process is getting a long-needed overhaul. Over time, I've had feedback from people who have authored DIPs and those who decided not to. There are a number of different opinions about how things can change, but there are some common themes among them.
I'll write in more detail about this later, but there are a few major goals I have with the overhaul:
- reduce the burden on the author
- reduce the amount of time a submitted DIP is in review
- establish support for fleshing out ideas before a DIP is even written
- establish support for developing initial DIP drafts before they are submitted
Previously, I'd always considered development of the DIP separate from the DIP "process", which I saw as beginning with the submission of a pull request. In reality, the process begins even before an author opens an editor to start typing. I hope that by recognizing that, and by providing support for discussing ideas and writing the DIP, we'll foster an environment that still maintains a relatively high bar for DIPs that get submitted, but also creates a filter such that potential DIP authors can be more confident that they aren't wasting their time once they get to the development stage. By the time they get there, they'll have no doubt if it's an idea worth pursuing.
I'm getting ready to open things up again. The new process is going to be much, much looser than before. I'll have all the details in the announcement when we reopen, and I should be able to give you a general timeframe after our planning session tomorrow.
I'm making this pre-announcement announcement now so that any authors with a DIP frozen in the PR queue can have a heads up. We'll need to treat these somewhat differently than new DIPs, but we'll be ready to get moving on them when the author is. It's entirely on the author's schedule, not ours.
And if any of you are thinking about submitting a new DIP, I ask you to start thinking about the details, but don't start writing it just yet. Once the new process is open, you won't have to sit and write it in isolation with no feedback from Walter or Atila. You'll be able to get feedback early from both them and the community, so you can know very early on if it's something you're willing to pursue, and you'll hopefully have a good bit of help to get it developed.
The process as it existed had a high bar with the intention of encouraging the production of quality DIPs and discouraging frivolous proposals. In practice, that high bar was a high barrier to entry and ended up discouraging even good proposals. I'm optimistic that the new process will lower the barrier to entry and still encourage quality proposals.
And by "quality" I'm not referring to the quality of the DIP's language. In the new process, the focus will be entirely on the details of the proposal and not on the language in which they're presented. I'm happy to clean that up myself once a proposal is accepted.
Just wanted to put out a heads up. More to come!
