Working Group GitHub Administration
RFC 8875

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                         A. Cooper
Request for Comments: 8875                                         Cisco
Category: Informational                                       P. Hoffman
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                    ICANN
                                                             August 2020

                  Working Group GitHub Administration

Abstract

   The use of GitHub in IETF working group processes is increasing.
   This document describes uses and conventions for working groups that
   are considering starting to use GitHub.  It does not mandate any
   processes and does not require changes to the processes used by
   current and future working groups not using GitHub.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8875.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction
   2.  Administrative Process and Conventions
     2.1.  Creation of GitHub Organizations
     2.2.  Migration of an Existing Organization
     2.3.  Personnel Changes
     2.4.  Working Group Closing
     2.5.  Creation of Document Repository
     2.6.  Listing Related Repositories
   3.  Working Group Process
     3.1.  Contributions
     3.2.  Backing Up and Archiving GitHub Content
   4.  Security Considerations
   5.  IANA Considerations
   6.  Informative References
   Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

   Many IETF working groups and participants make use of GitHub in
   different ways as part of their work on IETF documents.  Some others
   are interested in having their working groups use GitHub to
   facilitate the development of working group documents, but they are
   unfamiliar with how to get started or unclear about which conventions
   to follow.  Some other working groups use or plan to use other code-
   repository services such as GitLab and Bitbucket, which have
   different properties than GitHub.

   This document specifies a set of administrative processes and
   conventions for IETF working groups to use if they choose as a
   working group to use GitHub to facilitate their work.  The
   specifications in this document are not directed at working groups or
   individuals that are already using GitHub to do IETF work.  Practices
   vary among existing working groups, and some of them are not
   consistent with the conventions proposed here: that is fine.  The
   goal of the specifications in this document is not to require
   uniformity in current practice, but to help working groups get
   started using GitHub in a reviewed and validated way, if desired.

2.  Administrative Process and Conventions

   This section specifies an administrative process and conventions to
   support the creation and management of GitHub organizations for
   working groups and single-document repositories in a uniform way.
   The steps may be done manually by the IETF Secretariat, or they may
   be automated.  See <https://github.com/richsalz/ietf-gh-scripts> and
   <https://github.com/martinthomson/i-d-template> for working examples
   of automation that is in use in some working groups.

   In this document the question of whether processes should be manual
   or automated is deliberately left unspecified, since these are
   implementation details that the IETF Secretariat and Tools Team will
   address.

   Most of the conventions below are drawn from [RFC8874].

2.1.  Creation of GitHub Organizations

   This document specifies that there be a facility in the IETF
   Datatracker (<https://datatracker.ietf.org/>) interface to allow an
   area director (AD) or working group chair to request the creation of
   a GitHub organization for a particular working group.  Ideally, this