Hi all, I suggest a new template + guidelines to improve the AIP process. Please let me know what you think (especially the PMCs).
>From my point of view, the AIPs have unfortunately been rather useless so far. >There are currently 17 AIPs and not one of them has led to constructive >changes (afaik). I think this has various reasons: * The current AIP template is very broad and leaves a lot of room for interpretation * A plan (AIP) is put online but there is no follow up * Or; there is some follow up but the discussion stalls in technical details and eventually leads to nothing * Discussion happens in various places. Offline, JIRA, GitHub, Slack, etc. * The process of discussion, voting, proceeding, (and closing?) is unknown * It's vague when something is an AIP and when it's not (IMO anything related to the core of Airflow that's more than just a bugfix) I see lots of new features being added on a daily basis, but think Airflow really needs structural changes to resemble anything like Airflow 2.0. For this the AIPs are very important. I wouldn't impose structure and rules on the process but do think the following guidelines would help make the AIPs useful. With some inspiration from the Spark SPIPs<https://spark.apache.org/improvement-proposals.html>: * Anybody can submit an AIP * This person is the AIP author * Discussion takes place in Confluence only, so the AIP + comments are in 1 place * An Airflow PMC should volunteer as "AIP pilot". An AIP without the backing of a PMC has little chance. There should be a PMC supporting and advocating the AIP. * After some discussion and finding an AIP pilot, there is a voting round (Apache voting process<https://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html>) * The voting takes 3 days (72 hours) * If the voting is positive, a JIRA epic "AIP-XXX" is created and respective tickets are created under it I think clarity on the process and a dedicated PMC guiding the AIP would help a lot. The AIP Confluence page should updated to show the process of an AIP. Together with this, I suggest a new template with less room for interpretation: ------------ AIP-XXX Title Abstract Questions: 1. What change do you propose to make? 2. What problem does it solve? 3. Why is it needed? 4. Are there any downsides to this change? 5. Which users are affected by the change? 6. How are users affected by the change? (e.g. DB upgrade required?) 7. Other considerations? 8. What defines this AIP as "done"? ------------ Cheers, Bas
