RFCs for changes Requests for ROCm

ROCm RFC Process

Many changes, including bug fixes and documentation improvements can be implemented and reviewed via the normal GitHub pull request workflow.

Some changes though are "substantial", and we may ask that these be put through a bit of a design process and produce a consensus among the ROCm community and the AMD Core Developers.

The "RFC" (request for comments) process is intended to provide a consistent and controlled path for new features to enter the language and standard libraries, so that all stakeholders can be confident about the direction the language is evolving in.

When you need to follow this process

You need to follow this process if you intend to make "substantial" changes to ROCm Core Technology, Tools, Libraries, or the RFC process itself. What constitutes a "substantial" change is evolving based on community norms and varies depending on what part of the ecosystem you are proposing to change, but may include the following.

Any semantic or syntactic change to the language that is not a bugfix.
Removing language features, including those that are feature-gated.
Changes to the interface between the compiler and libraries, including lang items and intrinsics.
Additions to std.

Some changes do not require an RFC:

Rephrasing, reorganizing, refactoring, or otherwise "changing shape does not change meaning".
Additions that strictly improve objective, numerical quality criteria (warning removal, speedup, better platform coverage, more parallelism, trap more errors, etc.)
Additions only likely to be noticed by other developers-of-ROCm, invisible to users-of-ROCm.

If you submit a pull request to implement a new feature without going through the RFC process, it may be closed with a polite request to submit an RFC first.

What is the process

In short, to get a major feature added to ROCm, one must first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file. At that point the RFC is "active" and may be implemented with the goal of eventual inclusion into Rust.

Fork the RFC repo [RFC repository]
Copy 0000-ROCm-rfc-template.md to text/0000-ROCm-rfc-template.md (where "my-feature" is descriptive. don't assign an RFC number yet).
Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details.
Submit a pull request. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedback from the larger community, and the author should be prepared to revise it in response.
Each pull request will be labeled with the most relevant team, which will lead to its being triaged by that team in a future meeting and assigned to a member of the ROCm team.
Build consensus and integrate feedback. RFCs that have broad support are much more likely to make progress than those that don't receive any comments. Feel free to reach out to the RFC assignee in particular to get help identifying stakeholders and obstacles.
There will be discussion on the RFC pull request, as much as possible will be in comment thread of the pull request itself. Offline discussion will be summarized on the pull request comment thread.
At some point, a member of the team will propose a "motion for final comment period" (FCP), along with a disposition for the RFC (merge, close, or postpone).
- This step is taken when enough of the tradeoffs have been discussed that the subteam is in a position to make a decision. That does not require consensus amongst all participants in the RFC thread (which is usually impossible). However, the argument supporting the disposition on the RFC needs to have already been clearly articulated, and there should not be a strong consensus against that position outside of the subteam. Subteam members use their best judgment in taking this step, and the FCP itself ensures there is ample time and notification for stakeholders to push back if it is made prematurely.

The RFC life-cycle

Once an RFC becomes "active" then authors may implement it and submit the feature as a pull request to the Rust repo. Being "active" is not a rubber stamp, and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; it does mean that in principle all the major stakeholders have agreed to the feature and are amenable to merging it.

Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted and is "active" implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anything about whether a Rust developer has been assigned the task of implementing the feature. While it is not necessary that the author of the RFC also write the implementation, it is by far the most effective way to see an RFC through to completion: authors should not expect that other project developers will take on responsibility for implementing their accepted feature.

Modifications to "active" RFCs can be done in follow-up pull requests. We strive to write each RFC in a manner that it will reflect the final design of the feature; but the nature of the process means that we cannot expect every merged RFC to actually reflect what the end result will be at the time of the next major release.

In general, once accepted, RFCs should not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments. More substantial changes should be new RFCs, with a note added to the original RFC. Exactly what counts as a "very minor change" is up to the sub-team to decide; check [Sub-team specific guidelines] for more details.

Reviewing RFCs

While the RFC pull request is up, the team member may schedule meetings with the author and/or relevant stakeholders to discuss the issues in greater detail, and in some cases the topic may be discussed at a sub-team meeting. In either case a summary from the meeting will be posted back to the RFC pull request.

A team makes final decisions about RFCs after the benefits and drawbacks are well understood. These decisions can be made at any time, but the team will regularly issue decisions. When a decision is made, the RFC pull request will either be merged or closed. In either case, if the reasoning is not clear from the discussion in thread, the team will add a comment describing the rationale for the decision.

RadeonOpenCompute/rfcs

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