Node.js Enhancement Proposals

Overview

This repository contains the Node Enhancement Proposals (EPs) collection. These are documents describing an enhancement proposal for inclusion in Node.

EPs are used when the proposed feature is a substantial new API, is too broad or would modify APIs heavily. Minor changes do not require writing an EP. What is and isn't minor is subjective, so as a general rule, users should discuss the proposal briefly by other means (issue tracker, mailing list or IRC) and write a EP when requested by the Node core team.

Rational

The idea behind the EP process is to keep track of what ideas will be worked on and which ones were discarded, and why. This should help everyone (those closely involved with the project and newcomers) have a clear picture of where Node stands and where it wants to be in the future.

Format

EP documents don't follow a given format (other than being written in MarkDown). It is, however, required that all EPs include the following information at the top of the file:

Title
Name of author
Status (more on statuses later, new documents must be submitted with the 'draft' status
Date

The document file name must conform to the following format: "XXX-title-ish.md" and it must be added to the document index in 000-index.md.

Content

EP documents should be as detailed as possible. Any type of media which helps clarify what it tries to describe is more than welcome, be that an ASCII diagram, pseudocode or actual C code.

Licensing

All EP documents must be MIT licensed.

Progress of a EP

All EPs will be committed to the repository regardless of their acceptance. The initial status shall be "DRAFT".

If the document is uncontroversial and agreement is reached quickly it might be committed directly with the "ACCEPTED" status. Likewise, if the proposal is rejected the status shall be "REJECTED". When a document is rejected a member of the core team should append a section describing the reasons for rejection.

A document shall also be committed in "DRAFT" status. This means consensus has not been reached yet.

The author of a EP is expected to actually pursue and implement the proposal.