Design Guidelines - Delete this section

  • Not all new features need a design document. If a feature can be contributed in a single reasonably small patchset that has little impact to any other areas, it doesn't need a design discussion and documentation.
  • The focus of the design is to define the problem we need to solve and how it will be implemented.
  • This is not intended to be extensive documentation for a new feature.
  • You should get your design reviewed and merged before writing your code. However you are free to prototype the implementation, but remember that you may learn of new requirements during the design review process that could result in a very different solution.
  • Your spec should be in Markdown format, like this template.
  • Please wrap text at 79 columns.
  • Please do not delete any of the sections in this template. If you have nothing to say for a whole section, just write: None
  • To view your .md file, see: https://stackedit.io/
  • If you would like to provide a diagram with your spec, ASCII diagrams are required. http://asciiflow.com/ is a very nice tool to assist with making ASCII diagrams. Plain text will allow the review to proceed without having to look at additional files which can not be viewed in Gerrit. It will also allow inline feedback on the diagram itself.

Example design - this is the design title

Author: < Name and IRC nic > Primary assignee: < Name and/or IRC nic or None > Other contributors: < Name and/or IRC nic or None > Created: < Date initially created, revisions in will be tracked in Gerrit >

Problem Description

(1 paragraph) What are we doing and why? What problem are you trying to solve? What are the goals and NON-goals? Please make the objective understandable for someone unfamiliar with this project by including the necessary context, but keep it short. Elaborate on the details below in the Background and Requirements sections.

Background and References

(1-2 paragraphs) What background context is necessary? You should mention related work inside and outside of OpenBMC. What other Open Source projects are trying to solve similar problems? Try to use links or references to external sources (other docs or Wikipedia), rather than writing your own explanations. Please include document titles so they can be found when links go bad. Include a glossary if necessary. Note: this is background; do not write about your design, specific requirements details, or ideas to solve problems here.

Requirements

(2-5 paragraphs) What are the constraints for the problem you are trying to solve? Who are the users of this solution? What is required to be produced? What is the scope of this effort? Your job here is to quickly educate others about the details you know about the problem space, so they can help review your implementation. Roughly estimate relevant details. How big is the data? What are the transaction rates? Bandwidth?

Proposed Design

(2-5 paragraphs) A short and sweet overview of your implementation ideas. If you have alternative solutions to a problem, list them concisely in a bullet list. This should not contain every detail of your implementation, and do not include code. Use a diagram when necessary. Cover major structural elements in a very succinct manner. Which technologies will you use? What new components will you write? What technologies will you use to write them?

Alternatives Considered

(2 paragraphs) Include alternate design ideas here which you are leaning away from. Elaborate on why a design was considered and why the idea was rejected. Show that you did an extensive survey about the state of the art. Compares your proposal's features & limitations to existing or similar solutions.

Impacts

API impact? Security impact? Documentation impact? Performance impact? Developer impact? Upgradability impact?

Testing

How will this be tested? How will this feature impact CI testing?