Re: [precis] draft-whited-precis-test-vectors-00

[Martin J. Dürst <[e-mail]>]

On 2018/12/07 01:27, Sam Whited wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 6, 2018, at 10:12, Tom Worster wrote:
>> First, I also think this work is valuable but I don't understand how the
>> ID is supposed to proceed. The point of bringing it to IETF is to get
>> its authority behind the statement that these specific vectors test
>> conformance to the PRECIS RFCs. How can the IETF give this without
>> restarting the WG to push the ID forwards as a Standards Track RFC? I
>> don't think the independent submission review process can.
> 
> I don't really understand the process, but this makes sense to me and I think you're probably right. I'd be curious to hear if other IETF people who actually understand how any of this works agree or not though.

Based on my past own experience, I understand some of this, but not all 
of it. Besides Standards Track RFCs created by a WG, there's also the 
concept of a draft being sponsored by an Area Director for Standards 
Track. But this isn't used very much these days.

>> Second, my experience is that formatting of test vectors is kinda all
>> over the place in RFCs. I would not look there for guidance. Idk what
>> XML format you refer to but I wouldn't want to go down any XML road as
>> either producer or consumer.
> 
> Sorry, I meant the rfc2xml format; I'm not really sure if there's a name for that.

I'd think there is, it's 'rfc2xml format' or some such. There are 
actually several versions, but that's besides the point by now.

The fact that there's no consistent formatting for test vectors in RFCs 
is probably related to the fact that the IETF *as an organization* is 
not much into testing.

That doesn't mean that most of the people involved wouldn't understand 
the benefit of testing and use testing when developing or deploying 
protocols and similar stuff.

Regards,   Martin.