[Tools-discuss] Re: March tools update

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2026 at 8:31 AM Robert Sparks <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> ### IETF Tools roadmap
>
> No changes were made to the
> [roadmap](https://github.com/orgs/ietf-tools/projects/54/views/2) since
> the last report. We will drive further discussion after IETF 125.
>

Hi Robert,

I'm looking at the Roadmap site now and finding it quite hard to understand
what the actual state of things is in terms of progress. To take a concrete
example, consider the following issue, which is targeted for completion
in 2026Q1. https://github.com/ietf-tools/roadmap/issues/31

There don't seem to be any updates since it was created in 2025-12-15.
Where do I look on the site to see if it is on track for completion, behind,
etc.?

Thanks,
-Ekr





>
> ### Other areas of work underway
>
> In addition, but at a lower priority, we are:
> * Refactoring datatracker and mailarchive to reduce the amount of
> on-the-fly generation and to keep generated/static artefacts in blob
> storage to improve the datatracker's resiliency and performance.
> * Stabilizing the existing mail system, addressing basic delivery
> issues, and building a more managable system to replace it.
> * Fixing issues and making minor changes to xml2rfc and other author tools.
> * Fixing issues and making minor changes and repairing data to/in
> datatracker
> * Reviewing and incorporating community provided PRs
>
> ---
>
> ## Possible new work
>
> The following areas of possible new work have been identified since the
> last report:
>
> * The IETF Guides application is generating multiple error as users try
> to add names in Chinese characters for IETF 125.  The underlying cause
> is that the database was encoded in Latin-1 when it was created some
> years ago.  Currently these errors are being addressed with procedural
> workarounds but the database will need to be rebuilt with UTF-8 encoding.
> * The IAB have identified a set of liaison statements that can be
> deleted, many of which include attachments. Discussions are underway
> about the process to be followed here. including any work on preserving
> these for archival purposes and preserving the links.
>
> ---
>
> ## Deployment / Infrastructure Overview
>
> See the [Miro
> diagrams](
> https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVJvo6ZCg=/?share_link_id=982919235526)
>
> ## ⌨️ Development Projects
>
> ### Datatracker
> We have massively improved datatracker’s response times for plenary
> meeting agendas, especially for the iCalendar formats, through more
> aggressive and complete caching. We now maintain a warm cache for all
> plenary IETF meetings rather than only the current meeting. Serving
> iCalendar agendas for old meetings has been a substantial source of
> datatracker’s background load and this has now been reduced to near zero.
>
> In the February report, we reported that BOF request revisions in
> datatracker had been marked with incorrect timestamps. The bug was fixed
> previously and we have now corrected these timestamps based on the file
> modification times, which were not affected by the bug.
>
> Since the last IETF tools update (February 2026) there were two
> datatracker releases (both minor releases). See [the release
> page](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/releases) for releases
> 12.59.0 through 12.60.0. The full set of changes is
> [here](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/compare/12.58.0...12.60.0
> ).
>
> These releases included:
> * massively faster agenda responses, especially for iCalendar format,
> via more aggressive caching
> * adjustments to draft-stream-ietf stat descriptions, conforming to IESG
> decisions
> * secretariat/admin UI to update Meetecho’s cached session slides in
> case of inconsistency
> * preventing incorrect expiration of editorial drafts in non-expirable
> states
>
> The [Development Roadmap](https://github.com/orgs/ietf-tools/projects/9)
> outlines our plan for future work.
>
> Current activities:
> * Preparation for IETF-125
> * Development to support the RPC tools modernization project
>
> ### Author Tools
>
> See release notes for
> [1.10.9](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.10.9)
> and
> [1.10.10](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.10.10
> ).
>
> The new release include multiple bug fixes and vairous tool upgrades.
>
> ### XML2RFC
>
> See release notes for
> [3.32.0](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/releases/tag/v3.32.0).
>
> Notable changes:
>   * Drop support for Python 3.9.
>   * Fix for word break issue text. See
> [#1292](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/pull/1292).
>   * Fix for duplication of `<author>` anchors. See
> [#1290](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/issues/1290).
>
> Upcoming changes:
>   * Generate a valid PDF/A-3U PDF and attach XML source to the PDF. See
> [1090](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/pull/1090).
>   * Change boilerplate text from **IETF Trust** to **IETF Intellectual
> Property Management Corporation (IPMC)** for v3. See
> [#1171](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/issues/1171).
>   * Remove `@derivedAnchor` & `@derivedCounter` anchors in **uprep**
> stage. See [#1194](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/issues/1194).
>   * Include `@anchor` in `contact` elements for HTML & PDF output. See
> [#1291](https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/issues/1291).
>
> ### BibXML Service
>
> We are developing a new BibXML front-end that take latest Relaton Data
> gems to generate BibXML files and serve them from cloud object storage
> with a [typesense](https://typesense.org/) search frontend.
>
> This project saw no significant changes since the last report.
>
> See the proposed [architecture
> diagram](
> https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVJx7FoWU=/?focusWidget=3458764646532152564)
>
>   * **NIST** data set is stale. See
> [relaton-data-nist#18](
> https://github.com/ietf-tools/relaton-data-nist/issues/18)
>   * **IEEE** data set is stale. See
> [relaton-data-ieee#26](
> https://github.com/ietf-tools/relaton-data-ieee/issues/26)
>   * **W3C** data set is stale. See
> [relaton-data-w3c#18](
> https://github.com/ietf-tools/relaton-data-w3c/issues/18)
>
> ### Wagtail websites (www.ietf.org, www.iab.org)
>
> See the release notes for
> [2.8.0](https://github.com/ietf-tools/www/releases/tag/2.8.0) and
> [2.8.1](https://github.com/ietf-tools/www/releases/tag/2.8.1).
>
> These changes include improvements to social media footer links and
> social media sharing options.
> Also include bunch of security updates to wagtail and other dependencies.
>
> ### idnits
>
> Various fixes have been submitted by the community since last update:
>
> - allow nested `<section>` elements in special sections
> - improve OBSOLETE_*_REFERENCE error messages
> - update terminology from RFC2119 to BCP14
> - improve downref warning messages
>
> ### Mailarchive
>
> There was one
> [release](https://github.com/ietf-tools/mailarchive/releases) since the
> last report. Work focused on:
>   * add utility to cleanup duplicate messages
>   * continued work on blob storage support
>
> ### Registration
>
> There were two releases since the last report. Work consisted of:
>
>   * addition of API pre-endpoint authentication
>   * new API to support network requirements for IETF 125
>
>
> ### Retooling the RPC workflow ("Purple")
>
> #### General overview:
>
> Goal: Replace the legacy rfc-editor **workflow tool** and its database
> with a modern, integrated app (Project Purple).
>
> #### Progress since last report:
>
> * the full workflow to publish an RFC is nearly functional in staging
> * add API endpoints for external queue site
> * launch notification service pushing changes to queue site
> * add quicksearch for drafts, RFCs, clusters and authors
> * add feature to display, add and edit Action holders that are blocking
> publication
> * enable front-end tests (typescript, Vitest)
> * add feature to push changes on published RFC metadata to datatracker
>
>
> ### RFC Editor website ("Red")
>
> * Rendering fixes for RFCs (too much content after diagrams)
> * Dark mode text highlight fixes
> * Accessibility fixes (homepage, search results)
> * Changing `lodash-es` to `es-toolkit`
>
> ### Queue pages
>
> * Queue index page (homepage)
> * Clusters index and graph
> * Final Review index page
> * Accessibility fixes for colour contrast
> * Changing `lodash-es` to `es-toolkit`
>
> ### Errata system
>
> The Errata system has been re-implemented as a simple standalone Django
> project. It retains the basic properties of the existing system, but
> changes the following:
>
> * The RPC has an extra spam-screening step to discard spam before
> sending it to verifiers.
> * Verifiers login with datatracker credentials and their datatracker
> roles determine which reports they can verify.
>
>
> ### RFC Editor docuwikis
>
> Final testing of the RPC and Rfc-Editor dokuwikis running in kubernetes
> is underway.
>
> ### RPC Editor (DraftForge)
>
> The following features have been added to DraftForge since last update:
>
> - Prepare for Publishing tool, which scans the repository and generates
> a manifest file that can be read by Purple during publishing.
> - Check for RFC Number consistency
> - Various bug fixes
>
> ### Side Meetings
>
> A new [Side Meetings](https://sidemeetings.ietf.org) website to list
> room bookings for side meetings. It's integrated with the 3rd-party
> service Cal.com for the booking management. This is managed by the
> Secretariat.
>
> Issues related to the website can be submitted on
> https://github.com/ietf-tools/sidemeetings/issues
>
> ### Email systems
>
> The replacement mail system running on Kubernetes is now feature
> complete. Recent work has focused on DMARC-aware message rewriting — a
> new rewriter milter handles From: header and envelope sender rewriting
> for messages from domains with strict DMARC policies, replacing the
> earlier approach based on testing and feedback.
>
> Testing is underway on the UAT environment, with testing covering
> mailing list delivery, DMARC rewriting scenarios, virtual alias
> forwarding, and integration with Datatracker and mail archive. We are
> working through findings from UAT and preparing for benchmarking and
> production migration.
>
> ### YANG Catalog
>
> No changes since the last report.
>
> ---
>
> ## Maintenance
>
> ### Django
>
> Multiple systems including Datatracker are built on Django 4.2 LTS which
> reaches EOL in April 2026. Work will need to begin soon on migrating to
> Django 5.2 LTS, which as the major version change suggests, is more than
> a simple change. Several deprecated features Datatracker relies on are
> removed in Django 5.2 In particular, Django 5.0 retired support for the
> deprecated pytz library which Datatracker uses fairly extensively. It
> also deprecates the CICharField which the datatracker uses extensively
> for storing email addresses.
>
> ### Debian image bases
>
> Most of our containerized applications rely on Debian, and require
> updates following the Debian lifecycles. The datatracker's base image is
> currently built on bookwork (12), but needs to move to trixie (13) to
> support changes to libyang/libyang3-tools that are not available on
> bookworm. We attempted to make this move at the end of 2025 but
> encountered a dependency issue that will need to be resolved before we
> proceed.
>
> ### Kubernetes
>
> Kubernetes releases are supported by Azure for 1 year. As we are
> reaching EOL soon for the currently deployed version (1.32), the
> clusters will need to be upgraded to the latest version (1.34). The
> upgrade will proceed after the IETF 125 meeting. Because some of our
> applications don't yet support rolling updates (e.g. Datatracker), there
> will be a short downtime for those apps during the upgrade, which will
> be communicated in advance.
>
> ### Zulip Server
>
> [zulip server](https://zulip.ietf.org/) was upgraded from 10.4 to 11.5.
> See release notes for [Zulip Server 11.x
> series](
> https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview/changelog.html#zulip-server-11-x-series
> )
>
> ### HedgeDoc/notes
>
> There were couple of upgrades for
> [notes.ietf.org](https://notes.ietf.org/). It was upgraded to [HedgeDoc
> 11.06](https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc/releases/tag/1.10.6) and
> later on to [HedgeDoc
> 11.07](https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc/releases/tag/1.10.7).
> Between these deploys, there was a service affecting bug introduced by
> the HedgeDoc project. A sufficient number of concurrent editors would
> trigger conditions where some edits would be lost (see
> https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc/issues/6342) The most recent
> release ostensibly addressed this issue, but there are some reports that
> it persists. We are monitoring and investigating our options for
> reverting if necessary.
>
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