Changes to v2 of this proposal:
- Feedback from Laszlo[a] and Mike[b] incorporated.
- I opted to view Mike's responses to Laszlo's questions as
accepted, as no follow-up was made.

Feedback from Felix[c] *not* incorporated, as while I agree with all
of it, I am not convinced that information should go here, but should
instead reside with the UEFI Forum. (This text documents the public
part of the process - it would cause me slight impedance mismatch to
have it also document the non-public part.)

[a] https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/53422
[b] https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/53738
[c] https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/54453

/
Leif

---

This is a proposal for a process by which new features can be added to UEFI
forum specifications after first having been designed and prototyped in the
open.

This process lets changes and the development of new features happen in the
open, without violating the UEFI forum bylaws which prevent publication of
code for in-draft features/changes.

The process does not in fact change the UEFI bylaws - the change is that the
development (of both specification and code) happens in the open. The resulting
specification update is then submitted to the appropriate working goup as an
Engineering Change Request (ECR), and voted on. For the UEFI Forum, this is a
change in workflow, not a change in process.

ECRs are tracked in a UEFI Forum Mantis instance, access restricted to UEFI
Forum Members. TianoCore will enable this new process by providing areas on
https://bugzilla.tianocore.org/ to track both specification updates and
reference implementations and new repositories under
https://github.com/tianocore/ dedicated to hold "code first".


## Bugzilla

bugzilla.tianocore.org will have a product category each for
* ACPI Specification
* PI Specification
* UEFI Specification

Each product category will have a separate components for
* Specification
* Reference implementation


## Github
New repositories will be added for holding the text changes and the source code.

Specification text changes will be held within the affected source repository,
in the Github flavour of markdown, in a file (or split across several files)
with .md suffix.
(This one may break down where we have a specification change affecting multiple
specifications, but at that point we can track it with multiple BZ entries)

Reference implementations targeting EDK2 will be held in branches on
edk2-staging.
Additional repositories for implementing reference features in
additional open source projects can be added in the future, as required.


## Intended workflow
The entity initiating a specifiation update raises a Bugzilla in the appropriate
area in bugzilla.tianocore.org. This entry contains the outline of the change,
and the full initial draft text is attached.

If multiple specification updates are interdependent, especially if between
different specifications, then multiple bugzilla entries should be created.
These bugzilla entries *must* be linked together with dependencies.

After the BZs have been created, new branches should be created in the relevant
repositories for each bugzilla - the branch names should be BZ####, where ####
describes the bugzilla ID assigned, optionally followed by a '-' and something
more descriptive. If multiple bugzilla entries must coexist on a single branch,
one of them is designated the 'top-level', with dependencies properly tracked.
That BZ will be the one naming the branch.


## Source code
In order to ensure draft code does not accidentally leak into production use,
and to signify when the changeover from draft to final happens, *all* new or
modified[1] identifiers need to be prefixed with the relevant BZ####.

[1] Modified in a non-backwards-compatible way. If, for example, a statically
sized array is grown - this does not need to be prefixed. But a tag in a
comment would be *highly* recommended.

### File names
New public header files need the prefix. I.e. `Bz1234MyNewProtocol.h`
Private header files do not need the prefix.

### Contents

The tagging must follow the coding style used by each affected codebase.
Examples:

| Released in spec | Draft version in tree | Comment |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `FunctionName` | `Bz1234FunctionName` | |
| `HEADER_MACRO` | `BZ1234_HEADER_MACRO` | |

For data structures or enums, any new or non-backwards-compatible structs or
fields require a prefix. As above, growing an existing array in an existing
struct requires no prefix.

| `typedef SOME_STRUCT` | `BZ1234_SOME_STRUCT` | Typedef only [2] |
| `StructField` | `Bz1234StructField` | In existing struct[3] |
| `typedef SOME_ENUM` | `BZ1234_SOME_ENUM` | Typedef only [2] |

[2] If the struct or enum definition is separate from the typedef in the public
header, the definition does not need the prefix.
[3] Individual fields in newly added typedefd struct do not need prefix, the
struct already carried the prefix.

Variable prefixes indicating global scope ('g' or 'm') go before the BZ prefix.

| `gSomeGuid` | `gBz1234SomeGuid` | |

Local identifiers, including module-global ones (m-prefixed) do not require a
BZ prefix.