September Tools Update

[Robert Sparks <[e-mail]>]

This is also available at https://notes.ietf.org/tools-update-202609

# IETF tools update 2026-09

[Previous report](https://notes.ietf.org/tools-update-202608) | [Next 
report](#)

## The Big Picture

### Planning and community engagement

We are continuing in phase one of the three phase plan described in 
detail in the [August 
report](https://notes.ietf.org/tools-update-202608#Planning-and-community-engagement). 
As a reminder, the three phases detailed there are:

* Phase 1 - Organising the mess of GitHub issues
* Phase 2 - Estimating the level of effort (LoE) required
* Phase 3 - Initial prioritisation and community engagement

The reorganization of the thousands of datatracker issues using Claude 
assistance is proceeding and is nearing a tail of processing exceptional 
cases. As the issues have been aggregated, they've been organized using 
parents and sub-tasks, and notes from the agent's processing have been 
captured in the issue bodies. An example can be seen at 
https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/issues/11495. There are many 
other meeting scheduling related issues like this one that are being 
organized into the
```
Initiative -> Project -> Epic -> Task
```
structure discussed in the detail of the plan. As noted before, most of 
this work above the Task level is captured in the Tools Team ZenHub 
instance, which is not visible to the community. A mechanism for 
visualizing this organization is under development. These may look like 
this [early version of a detailed view containing issue 
11495](https://gist.staff.ietf.org/card-meetings-2026-08-27.html).

As the datatracker reorganization completes, any issues from the other 
project repositories that are not already organized into this structure 
will be added.

As we continue through this phase anything immediately urgent will be 
identified, but most of the issues will not be estimated or prioritised 
until we proceed to phase 2.


### AI and our codebases

Please note again the discussion in the [August 
report](https://notes.ietf.org/tools-update-202608?both#AI-written-code) 
on AI written code, covering
* Use of AI by the Tools Team
* AI assisted contribution
* AI maintained code bases

We've known for some time that the many views in datatracker relying on 
the document search functions have been in need of a refactor. Some 
automated traffic early in the month led us to analyze the paths for 
optimization. The code had grown organically over decades and the 
queries were so spread out that manual optimization was a large task. 
With Claude's help, we were able to analyze what could be effectively 
optimized - see the detailed description of the optimization at [PR 
#11507](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/pull/11507) and [this 
analysis of the effect of deploying the 
PR](https://gist.staff.ietf.org/effects-of-search-optimization.html).

All of the related views are still in need of a major refactor to 
simplify the workflows and push as much work into pre-computation as 
possible.


---

## :fire: Hot Topics

### Email systems

We have been making the final preparations for a [major infrastrucuture 
upgrade](https://www.ietf.org/blog/email-service-tranistion-2026-09/) to 
our mail system. As that blog entry notes, this transition is part of 
the multi-year effort to update the entire IT infrastructure supporting 
the IETF. This transition is scheduled for 11 Sep.

---

## ⌨️ Development Projects

### Datatracker

Datatracker has been operating smoothly with a few minor exceptions. As 
planned, we finished upgrading our Kubernetes clusters to the latest 
available version. This involved near zero downtime but did cause users 
to be logged out because the session cache does not survive node 
migration. There have also been several 5-15 minute periods of degraded 
performance caused by automated requests. We have mitigated these 
through a combination of optimizing inefficient endpoints and adjusting 
Cloudflare rate limits / managed challenges.

Operationally, datatracker is now operating in Kubernetes with multiple 
backend server pod replicas. This better handles heavy load and has 
allowed us to use a rolling update strategy to perform most release 
upgrades with zero downtime. Upgrades that involve data or schema 
migrations still require a short period of downtime, but this is a 
minority of our releases.

Beginning with Datatracker release 12.74.0, all I-Ds submitted as XML 
will be processed with idnits3 and the output displayed as an advisory. 
This is intended to prepare authors for the change and to encourage 
feedback so we can fix bugs and reduce friction before requiring 
conformance with the new tool. A future Datatracker release will begin 
to gate submission acceptance on the output of idnits3.

Datatracker's YANG tooling is now up to date. Instead of relying on 
Debian's packaged version, the current version (5.8.6 right now) is 
compiled from source and installed. This will be kept up to date going 
forward.

Since the last IETF tools update (August 2026) there were four 
Datatracker releases (all minor releases). See [the release 
page](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/releases) for releases 
12.71.0 through 12.74.0. The full set of changes is 
[here](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/compare/12.70.0...12.74.0). 
These changes include contributions from the Code Sprint at IETF 126. 🎉

These releases included:
* Added idnits3 scanning of submissions, treating nits as warnings
* Added pending interim notice to group meetings list page
* Added accurate RFC Editor queue status for documents in the queue
* Added Person UUIDs and supporting APIs
* Updated to latest yanglint
* Display requests for AD decisions on the AD dashboard
* Improved address validation in the “Announcement” tool
* Optimized profile page rendering
* Optimized /doc/search performance
* Fixed generation of the idnits2 rfc-status blob for 5-digit RFC numbers
* Corrected labeling of BOF groups in session notification messages
* Fixed IESG dashboard UI instability

Current activities:
* Systematically reviewing and organizing issue backlog in preparation 
for planning and prioritization
* Conversion of Datatracker from an OIDC provider to a client of a new 
self-hosted authentication service
* Preparation for migration to Django 5.2 LTS
* Moving bibxml generation for RFCs and I-Ds into Datatracker (see the 
feat/bibxml branch)

### Author Tools

See release notes for 
[1.12.0](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.12.0), 
[1.12.1](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.12.1), 
[1.12.2](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.12.2) 
and 
[1.12.3](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/releases/tag/1.12.3).

Author tools has dropped a dormant authentication function and updated 
several dependencies.

Upcoming changes:
  * YANG validation option with `pyang`. See 
[#662](https://github.com/ietf-tools/author-tools/issues/662).

### XML2RFC

No new releases since the last report.

### BibXML Service

See release notes for 
[1.5.1](https://github.com/ietf-tools/bibxml-service/releases/tag/1.5.1).

There have been several dependency updates and mainly, a major 
performance update. See 
[#509](https://github.com/ietf-tools/bibxml-service/pull/509).

While working on AI-assisted performance updates to existing 
bibxml-service, we have been working on moving BibXML generation for 
RFCs, RFC subseries and I-Ds to datatracker.
These will be served from a blob store.
These changes are currently on a [feature 
branch](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/tree/feat/bibgen). The 
initial implementation (when this goes live) will serve RFC and RFC 
subseries generated bibxml from datatracker via a blob store.

### Wagtail websites (www.ietf.org, www.iab.org)

See release notes for 
[2.10.2](https://github.com/ietf-tools/www/releases/tag/2.10.2).

This release has several security updates to dependencies including a 
Wagtail update to 
[7.4.3](https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/releases#release-v7.4.3).

### idnits

No new releases since the last report. As noted in the [Datatracker 
section](#Datatracker), idnits3 is now running as part of the I-D 
submission process.

### Mailarchive
There were five releases since the last report. See [the release 
pages](https://github.com/ietf-tools/mailarchive/releases) for releases 
2.49.0 - 2.52.0. Work focused on:
  * Improvement to Elasticsearch query performance
  * Load auxillary message directories into Blob Storage
  * Improve performance of group by thread queries
  * Allow multiple API keys per endpoint
  * User persistent database connections
  * Update removed message page
  * Refactor import message exception handling
  * Add admin Blob Viewer
  * Refactor blob StoredObject layer

### Registration
There were three releases since the last report (1.89.0 - 1.90.0). Work 
consisted of:
  * Prevent duplicate hackathon registrations
  * Prep for IETF 128 (hero image, LOI)
  * Add support for different registration questions per meeting
  * Add Travel Grant comp type
  * Adjust format and ordering of Companion Report

### RPC workflow tool ("Purple")

Since the last IETF tools update (August 2026), there were eight purple 
releases. See the [release 
page](https://github.com/ietf-tools/purple/releases) for releases 1.24.0 
through 1.30.1.

These releases include:

* Added blocking rules
* Improved display by showing names instead of slugs
* Added flags to make labels public/non-public
* Fine-tuned rules for active/inactive clusters
* Improved exception logging

### RFC Editor website ("Red")

Search v2 is now the default, replacing the original implementation, 
which has been removed. Searches produce a shareable URL, and adding a 
filter narrows the results on screen instead of starting a new search.

Most of the remaining work was on personalisation. Signed-in users can 
rate an RFC, subscribe to be notified when it changes, and collect RFCs 
into sets with a shareable page each. The controls appear on RFC cards 
in search results and on the RFC page. This is behind a feature flag 
until the account feature and Reef (below) are finished.

* [A draft report on text layout and 'word 
breaking'](https://github.com/ietf-tools/red/blob/main/docs/mobile-layout/report.md) 
was written to answer questions about how and why we modify RFC text to 
render RFCs on `/info/rfcN/` routes for mobile and accessibility 
support. The original `/rfc/rfcN.html` routes are left untouched.
* First `/subjects/` pages, for browsing RFCs by subject.
* Accessibility fixes: heading levels, errata links, scroll-to-top, and 
mobile layout and scrolling problems.
* Content improvements from Alexis Rossi: ["What is an RFC" and "Tips 
for reading an RFC" 
merged](https://github.com/ietf-tools/red/issues/483), an [expanded "how 
to" guide](https://github.com/ietf-tools/red/issues/485), [heading 
hierarchy](https://github.com/ietf-tools/red/issues/486).
* Robustness improvements: the edge worker now rejects malformed request 
paths itself, and its ETag, HEAD and cache-duration handling were fixed.
* End-to-end tests run in parallel on CI for every pull request, with 
screenshot comparisons.

### RFC Editor surveys ("Reef")

Reef is the service behind the personalisation and survey features 
above. It holds what belongs to a person rather than to an RFC (ratings, 
subscriptions, sets) and serves the public totals the website shows. In 
progress.

* Subscription notifications work end to end: queued per subscriber, 
collected into one digest, with deduplication, retries and cleanup. 
Actual emailing doesn't happen yet.
* The Datatracker has no change feed, so Reef compares the website's RFC 
index against a stored snapshot. Only status, obsoletion, updates and 
subseries are notified; a title typo should not mail everybody.
* Ratings, plus the per-RFC averages, rating counts and subscriber 
totals the website displays, generated ahead of time.
* Subjects, a curated vocabulary for classifying RFCs, with staff 
administration. A subject can be retired, or merged into another, taking 
its documents and followers.
* Document sets, with soft deletion and an administrative takedown process.
* Surveys can name the RFCs or subjects they concern, so they are only 
offered on relevant pages, and never twice.

### Queue pages

* Assignment roles come from the API, so "In Progress (Reference Checker 
/ First Editor / Second Editor)" uses the RPC's own role names and new 
roles need no website change.
* Block reasons display verbatim, a leftover relabelling is gone, and 
the two reference-edit reasons are explained on the about page.
* About page copyedited, with more on document labels (Code, Bis, Status 
Change, and the editing work-level labels).
* New "Final Review Started on" column.
* Final review pages are no longer indexed by search engines.
* Dependency upgrades and CI tidying.

### Errata system
[Release 1.3.0](https://github.com/ietf-tools/errata/releases/tag/1.3.0) 
was deployed 18 Aug. This addressed several issues and included 
codesprint contribution.


### RPC Editor (DraftForge)

No new releases since the last report.

### Side Meetings

The new [Side Meetings](https://sidemeetings.ietf.org) v2 website is now 
live. It will be used for the upcoming IETF 127 meeting and should 
address most of the issues flagged in the previous meeting.

## IETF Account / Authentik

Work is ongoing for the migration of accounts from Datatracker in Authentik.

## Guides

The IETF Guides system was moved to Django 5, postgres (from mariadb), 
and its container base moved to debian trixie.


### YANG Catalog

[Work has been 
deployed](https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/pull/11668) to allow 
Datatracker to use the more up-to-date YANG tooling than is available in 
Debian packaging. Joe Clarke has made some corrections addressing typos 
and links across the site.

---

## Maintenance

### Django

Datatracker continues to run on Django 4.2 (LTS) which is out of 
support. We continue to monitor Django releases and CVEs for any that 
are relevant and patch/backport as necessary.

### Kubernetes

All our Kubernetes clusters are now running the latest version.

### Zulip Server

We are testing Zulip [12.x 
series](https://blog.zulip.com/2026/04/27/zulip-12-0-released/) on 
staging. The IETF production Zulip server will be updated to the 12.x 
series in the upcoming weeks.

### HedgeDoc/notes

notes.ietf.org has been updated from HedgeDoc 1.11.0 to HedgeDoc 1.12.0. 
See [release notes](https://notes.ietf.org/s/release-notes).
notes.ietf.org has been configured so that IETF LLC managed domains 
don't get an external redirect warning anymore. See 
[#12](https://github.com/ietf-tools/hedgedoc/issues/12) & 
[#14](https://github.com/ietf-tools/hedgedoc/pull/14/changes).