Re: [netmod] YANG Versioning Weekly Call Minutes - 2021-06-08

[Andy Bierman <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2021 at 9:38 AM Kent Watsen <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> > Good thing we are not discussing YANG-next...
>>
>> Sarcasm?  ;)
>>
>
> No. The NETMOD WG has repeatedly decided not to produce a new YANG language
> version in which the yang-version string is changed.
>
>
> That’s not possibly true.   It's a matter of “when", not “if”, unless
> you’re anticipating YANG moving to HISTORIC.
>
>
I meant the current work is using extensions instead of new language
statements.
Not that the yang-version will never be changed in the future.

It is not a matter of "when" if new functionality is added via extensions.
In theory the WG could add new functionality to YANG 1.1 this way for years.
In practice it might be difficult to achieve widespread interoperability if
nobody
agrees what "YANG next"  actually contains. Also, YANG 1.1 clearly says a
tool MAY
skip over and ignore ANY external statement, so it is problematic to use
extension-stmt
as if it was defining real statements. It is better to have a tool clearly
fail
with an "unsupported YANG version" error than it is to silently ignore
external statements.



K.
>
>
Andy