[pcap-ng-format] Procedure for registering new block type value and block-specific values such as options

[Guy Harris]

On Nov 20, 2018, at 7:26 AM, Michael Richardson <mcr at sandelman.ca> wrote:

> Ah, an IANA Considerations discussion :-)
> 
> Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> 1) The requestor sends a message to this list saying "I'm going to be
>> proposing a block called the "Writer's Block" for pcapng; could you
>> please reserve a block number for me?  I'll make a pull request once I
>> get a block number.", we update the "Standardized Block Type Codes"
>> table to mark it as reserved for their block and send a reply, and they
>> then make a pull request, with the new code in the ASCII-art diagram
>> for their block.  Once the discussion for the pull request reaches a
>> consensus on the block being sufficiently well-specified and the
>> specification being reasonable, the pull request is merged, and we then
>> update the "Standardized Block Type Codes" table.
> 
> I prefer this mechanism.
> 
> I don't mind if the initial "message" is in the form of a pull request to
> allocate the block number along the lines of:
> 
>> 4) The requestor picks a currently-unused value, where
>> "currently-unused" includes "not requested in any pull request,
>> either"; if it's currently requested in another pull request, we add a
>> comment saying "sorry, somebody already wants to use that, pick another
>> value" and it's not merged until they do.
> 
> in other words, I'm happy if the first pull request is along the lines of
> adding:
> 
> 0xABCD1234      someone at example.com 2018-11-20 proposed Writer's Block

So that's a pull request to add that entry to the "Standardized Block Type Codes" section of the spec... 

> and then a second one has all the details.

...and that would add the description of the block as a new sub-section to the "Block Definition" section?

So you're voting for either 1) (where it starts with an e-mail) or 4.5) (where it starts with a pull request that just adds a new standardized block type code)?