Re: [yang-doctors] RFC 9127-bis question - impact of reference clauses in an import statement

[Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]>]

Dear YANG doctors,

A wonderful end of year holiday gift would be to ship the fix to RFC 9127.

Please answer the question below.

-- Jeff

On Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 05:12:07PM -0500, Jeffrey Haas wrote:
> [Reference message to issue in thread:
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rtg-bfd/Ajo-ku8EJxiEnZjdkRfdzGIg59A/ ]
> 
> YANG doctors,
> 
> The BFD Working Group is trying to move forward on the RFC 9127-bis work
> that was previously discussed with you.  I believe there is consensus in how
> we will move forward on the modification to the common configuration
> grouping and its associated feature statement.  This strategy was previously
> communicated to you all.
> 
> This is a question about what we put in the -bis document.  Previously, the
> thinking was we did a full re-issue.  Tom Petch, in the thread cited above,
> notes that we minimally can't do part of this because there are modules
> already delegated to IANA.
> 
> The discussion about the what the internet-draft text should include from
> RFC 9127 or not lead to a question I had: Would it not be sufficient to
> simply issue an update to the ietf-bfd-types module where all of the impact
> is isolated?
> 
> Tom's argument is that the form of the import, which contains references to
> RFC 9127, suggest we really want a re-issue so we point to the proper new RFC.
> 
> As an example, from module ietf-bfd:
>  :  import ietf-bfd-types {
>  :    prefix bfd-types;
>  :    reference
>  :      "RFC 9127: YANG Data Model for Bidirectional Forwarding
>  :       Detection (BFD)";
>  :  }
> 
> As best I am able to tell from RFC 7950, § 7.21.4, reference is partially
> meant to be informational.  If it was normative, an update to any module
> imported by another with a reference would require an update.
> 
> Note that this isn't an import by revision.
> 
> My question is thus what are the rules to issue module updates in such
> circumstances?
> 
> Tom and the BFD YANG authors are copied to make sure I haven't
> misrepresented the situation.
> 
> -- Jeff