[Pce] Your help with an errata report on RBNF in RFC 5557

"Adrian Farrel" <adrian@olddog.co.uk> Fri, 27 September 2013 10:04 UTC

Return-Path: <adrian@olddog.co.uk>
X-Original-To: pce@ietfa.amsl.com
Delivered-To: pce@ietfa.amsl.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6147521F9635 for <pce@ietfa.amsl.com>; Fri, 27 Sep 2013 03:04:43 -0700 (PDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at amsl.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -2.574
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.574 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[AWL=0.025, BAYES_00=-2.599]
Received: from mail.ietf.org ([12.22.58.30]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id O8Heb7eLsymf for <pce@ietfa.amsl.com>; Fri, 27 Sep 2013 03:04:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from asmtp5.iomartmail.com (asmtp5.iomartmail.com [62.128.201.176]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9724611E8127 for <pce@ietf.org>; Fri, 27 Sep 2013 03:04:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from asmtp5.iomartmail.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by asmtp5.iomartmail.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id r8RA4UHw017185 for <pce@ietf.org>; Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:04:31 +0100
Received: from 950129200 (dsl-sp-81-140-15-32.in-addr.broadbandscope.com [81.140.15.32]) (authenticated bits=0) by asmtp5.iomartmail.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id r8RA4UL6017175 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO) for <pce@ietf.org>; Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:04:30 +0100
From: Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk>
To: pce@ietf.org
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:04:26 +0100
Message-ID: <036f01cebb68$f3802ea0$da808be0$@olddog.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0
Thread-Index: Ac67aGuDG2yNBywkTzWBnfdn6SZmTQ==
Content-Language: en-gb
Subject: [Pce] Your help with an errata report on RBNF in RFC 5557
X-BeenThere: pce@ietf.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12
Precedence: list
Reply-To: adrian@olddog.co.uk
List-Id: Path Computation Element <pce.ietf.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/pce>, <mailto:pce-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/pce>
List-Post: <mailto:pce@ietf.org>
List-Help: <mailto:pce-request@ietf.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/pce>, <mailto:pce-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:04:43 -0000

Some time back Cyril raised an Errata Report against RFC 5557
http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?eid=3672

The essence of his report is that message definitions in RFCs should include all
elements of RBNF from the messages as defined in previous RFCs.

Discussion of this point led to a debate about whether the RBNF is normative and
should be "compilable". Some hold the view that being conservative in what you
send and liberal in what you receive could only make this text normative for
building messages not parsing them. Others noted that, as with RSVP, the object
ordering is advisory not mandatory except as where noted explicitly in the text.

It is also worth noting that as various documents are developed in parallel,
getting the RBNF right in the RFCs might require last-minute edits in Auth48
which is undesirable for a host of reasons. Others observed that there is no
expectation that authors will read RFC in numeric order and that the RBNF for a
new feature in PCEP applies to how that feature is added.

All this led to http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-cmfg-pce-pcep-grammar/
which is an experiment to determine whether it is possible to derive an
aggregated RBNF description for all PCEP messages. This might (if successful) go
on to form a type of message registry to act as a stable reference point.

With all this in mind, I propose to reject the current report.

Does anyone object.

Thanks,
Adrian