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Many changes, including bug fixes and documentation improvements can beimplemented and reviewed via the normal GitHub pull request workflow.

Some changes though are "substantial", and we ask that these be put through abit of a design process and produce a consensus among the Nix community.

This process is followed when one intends to make "substantial" changes to theNix ecosystem. What constitutes a "substantial" change is evolving based oncommunity norms, but may include the following.

• Any semantic or syntactic change to the language that is not a bug fix
• Removing language features
• Big restructuring of Nixpkgs
• Expansions to the scope of Nixpkgs (new arch, major subprojects, ...)
• Introduction of new interfaces or functions

Certain changes do not require an RFC:

• Adding, updating and removing packages in Nixpkgs
• Fixing security updates and bugs that don't break interfaces

Pull requests that contain any of the aforementioned 'substantial' changes maybe closed if there is no RFC connected to the proposed changes.

A team of people defined byRFC 36and stays consistent until the team members are changed via a follow-up RFC.This committee is responsible for forming an RFC Shepherd team from theavailable nominations on each RFC. This team also names the leader of theShepherd team. This has to happen within 1 week after the PR has been opened.Until then the Steering Committee is responsible for guiding the discussion. Incase of the Shepherding Team not doing its work the Steering Committee shallencourage them or step in and assign new Shepherds. They also are in charge ofmerging accepted and rejected RFCs. Generally by these expectations they shouldfind time to meet once a week for about an hour.

They have no special responsibility with regard to the content of an RFC, theycan weigh in on them, the same as any other community member, but are only incharge of:

• selecting the Shepherds unanimously
• supervising that the Shepherds are carrying out their work
• committing the final RFC

A team of 3-4 community members defined unanimously by the RFC SteeringCommittee, responsible for accepting or rejecting a specific RFC. This team iscreated per RFC from community members nominated in the discussion on that RFC.

This team should be people who are very familiar with the main componentstouched by the RFC. The author cannot be part of the Shepherd Team. In addition,at most half of the Shepherd Team can be part of the RFC Steering Committee.

The responsibility of the team is to guide the discussion as long as it isconstructive, new points are brought up and the RFC is iterated on and from timeto time summarise the current state of discussion. If this is the case no longer,then the Shepherd Team shall step in with a motion for FCP.

The person in charge of the RFC process for a specific RFC, and responsible forensuring the process is followed in a timely fashion. The Shepherd Leader has nospecial responsibility with regard to moving an undecided Shepherd Team to acertain decision.

A period of ten calendar days, which will be called by the Shepherd Team afterthe RFC has received ample discussion and enough of the tradeoffs have beendiscussed. The Shepherd Team will propose to either accept or reject the RFCafter the FCP.

In short, to get a major change included in Nix or Nixpkgs, one mustfirst get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file under therfcs directory. At that point the RFC is accepted and may be implementedwith the goal of eventual inclusion into Nix or Nixpkgs.

graph TD    Start((Start)) --> Draft    Draft -->|Ready for Review| Discuss    style Draft fill:#008,color:#FFF    Discuss[Discuss and Refine]    Discuss ---> |On Hold| Draft    Discuss --> |Can't Find Shepherds| NoShepherds    Discuss --> |Motion for FCP| FCP    NoShepherds[Closed - Lack of Interest]:::closed    NoShepherds --> |Renewed Interest| Discuss    FCP[Final Coment Phase]    FCP --> |FCP Canceled| Discuss    FCP --> |Accept| Merged    FCP --> |Reject| Rejected    Merged    style Merged fill:#080,color:#FFF    Rejected[Closed - Rejected]:::closed    Withdrawn[Closed - Withdrawn]:::closed    Discuss & Draft --->|Author Withdraws| Withdrawn    classDef closed fill:#800,color:#FFF

0. Have a cool idea!
1. Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details: RFCs that do not presentconvincing motivation, demonstrate understanding of the impact of the design,or are disingenuous about the drawbacks or alternatives tend to bepoorly-received. Consider usingSemantic Line Breaksin order to get better diffs on later amendments.
2. Consider publishing your RFC as pre-RFCin the forumto gather initial feedback and iron out the remaining typos.
3. In case your RFC is a technical proposal, you might want to prepare aprototype of your idea to firstly make yourself aware of potential pitfallsand also help reviewers understand the RFC. Code may be able to explain someissues in short.
4. Submit a pull request. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedbackfrom the larger community, and the author should be prepared to revise it inresponse.
5. For the nomination process for potential members of the RFC Shepherd Team,that is specific to each RFC, anyone interested can either nominate anotherperson or themselves to be a potential member of the RFC Shepherd Team. Thiscan already be done when submitting the PR.
6. The RFC Steering Committee assigns a subset of the nominees to the RFCShepherd Team and designates a leader for it. This has to be doneunanimously.
7. Build consensus and integrate feedback. RFCs that have broad support are muchmore likely to make progress than those that don't receive any comments. Feelfree to reach out to the RFC Shepherd Team leader in particular to get helpidentifying stakeholders and obstacles.
8. The RFC Shepherd Team will discuss the RFC pull request, as much as possiblein the comment thread of the pull request itself. Discussion outside of thepull request, either offline or in a video conference, that might bepreferable to get to a solution for complex issues, will be summarized on thepull request comment thread.
9. RFCs rarely go through this process unchanged, especially as alternatives anddrawbacks are shown. You can make edits, big and small, to the RFC to clarifyor change the design, but make changes as new commits to the pull request,and leave a comment on the pull request explaining your changes.Specifically, do not squash or rebase commits after they are visible on thepull request.
10. At some point, a member of the RFC Shepherd Team will propose to start the"Final Comment Period" (FCP) on behalf of the team, along with a dispositionfor the RFC (usually "merge" or "close").
    • This step is taken when enough of the tradeoffs have been discussed thatthe RFC Shepherd Team is in a position to make a decision. That does notrequire consensus amongst all participants in the RFC thread (which isusually impossible). However, the argument supporting the disposition onthe RFC needs to have already been clearly articulated, and there shouldnot be a strong consensus against that position outside of the RFCShepherd Team. RFC Shepherd Team members use their best judgment in takingthis step, and the FCP itself ensures there is ample time and notificationfor stakeholders to push back if it is made prematurely.
    • For RFCs with lengthy discussion, the motion to FCP is usually preceded bya summary comment trying to lay out the current state of the discussionand major tradeoffs/points of disagreement.
    • In order to actually enter FCP, it must be made clear that all members ofthe RFC Shepherd Team sign off the motion, e.g. through comments, reactions,approving reviews or a meeting protocol.
11. The FCP is advertised widely by the shepherds, most importantly in the relevantDiscourse announcements category.It lasts ten calendar days starting with the Discourse announcement, so thatit is open for at least 5 business days. This way all stakeholders have achance to lodge any final objections before a decision is reached.
12. In most cases, the FCP is quiet, and the RFC is either merged orclosed. However, sometimes substantial new arguments or ideas are raised,the FCP is canceled, and the RFC goes back into development mode.The feedback during FCP may result in minor adjustments to the RFC, this isnot necessarily a reason to cancel FCP.
13. In case of acceptance, the RFC Steering Committee merges the PR.Otherwise the RFC's pull request is closed. If noconsensus can be reached on the RFC but the idea in general is accepted, itgets closed, too. A note is added that is should be proposed again, when thecircumstances, that are stopping the discussion to come to another decision,change.

Ideally every RFC will complete review and be accepted or rejected. Unfortunately this can not always be the case. Much like in distributed systems, timeouts are needed to avoid spending resources monitoring tasks that will never complete.

If the author is unable or unwilling to update the RFC in a timely fashion they may mark an RFC as "On Hold" to indicate that the RFC should not continue to be pushed forward for the time being.

The author canmark the PR as a Draft and the existing labelstatus: on hold can be applied to the PR by the NixOS RFC Steering Committee for tracking reasons.

RFCs in Draft status will be completely ignored by the NixOS RFC Steering Committee. It is also expected that community members will largely refrain from review until the author has indicated that the RFC is once again ready.

At any point of time the author can either remove the Draft status from the RFC to indicate that they believe that it is ready for additional review and that they have the time to continue the RFC process. Or they can close the RFC to indicate that this RFC is unlikely to to ever move forward.

If an RFC is unable to find an adequate number of shepherds after 1 month of being open, the following message will be added to the PR to suggest ways to find more support:

RFCSC:This RFC has not acquired enough shepherds. This typically shows lack of interest from the community. In order to progress[a full shepherd team is required](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/#shepherd-team). Consider trying to raise interest by[posting in Discourse](https://discourse.nixos.org/),[talking in Matrix](https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org) or reaching out to people that you know.If not enough shepherds can be found in the next month we will close this RFC until we can find enough interested participants. The PR can be reopened at any time if more shepherd nominations are made.[See more info on the Nix RFC process here](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/README.md)

If another month elapses after and a shepherd team still hasn't been assembled the following message will be posted, thestatus: insufficient interest label will be added and the issue will be closed.

RFCSC: This RFC is being closed due to lack interest. If enough shepherds are found this issue can be reopened. If you don't have permission to reopen please[open an issue for the NixOS RFC Steering Committee](https://github.com/NixOS/rfc-steering-committee/issues/new) linking to this PR.

Most RFCs describe changes that eventually need to be implemented, usually inform of pull requests against one of the Nix* repositories. Ideally,implementations are ready to be merged alongside the RFC when it gets accepted.Other times, implementation happens only after the RFC gets accepted.Being accepted is not a rubber stamp,and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; itdoes mean that in principle all the major stakeholders have agreed to thefeature and are amenable to merging it. In general though this means that theimplementation will be merged as long as there are no substantial technicalobjections to the implementation.

Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted implies nothing aboutwhat priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anythingabout whether a Nix/Nixpkgs developer has been assigned the task of implementingthe feature. While it is not necessary that the author of the RFC also write theimplementation, it is by far the most effective way to see an RFC through tocompletion: authors should not expect that other project developers will take onresponsibility for implementing their accepted feature.

RFC documents are intended to be seen as the documentation of a decision and asnapshot of a moment in time, rather than a specification-like normative document.Think more of a Matrix Spec Proposal and less like an IETF RFC. Therefore,once accepted, RFCs should generally not be substantially changed. Only veryminor changes should be submitted as amendments (via a follow-up pull request).It is the general expectation that any information intended to be normative and"outlive" the initial RFC process should live outside of the RFC document, mostlyin documentation and code. These may be subject to change as usual, and of courseany "substantial" changes will again require a new RFC. Usually there is no needto update the original RFC to keep it up with updates on the implementation.

The current members of the RFC Steering Committee can be seen on theNixOS website.

All contributions are licensed by their respective authors under theCC-BY-SA 4.0 License.