0000 Template - Onnx

Feature Name: (fill me in with a unique ident, my_awesome_feature)
Start Date: (fill me in with today's date, YYYY-MM-DD)
RFC PR: onnx/onnx#0000
Status: (one of "under discussion, "accepted", "superseded", "rejected")
Authors: (list of github user names)

Summary

One paragraph explanation of the feature.

Motivation

Any changes to the ONNX standard or related software should focus on solving a problem that users are having. This section should explain this problem in detail, including necessary background.

It should also contain several specific use cases where this feature can help a user, and explain how it helps. This can then be used to guide the design of the feature.

This section is one of the most important sections of any RFC, and can be lengthy.

Guide-level explanation

Explain the proposal as if it has already been accepted and this were part of the relevant user-facing documentation. For operators they may typically mean the doc-string associated with the operator. More generally (e.g., when proposing a large addition to the onnx Python package) this may include:

Introducing new named concepts.
Explaining the feature largely in terms of examples.
Explaining how downstream users should think about the feature. It should explain the impact on downstream use-cases as concretely as possible.
If applicable, provide sample error messages, deprecation warnings, or migration guidance.

Reference-level explanation

This is the technical portion of the RFC. Explain the design in sufficient detail that:

Its interaction with other features/operators is clear.
It is reasonably clear how the feature would be implemented (here or downstream in case of a proposed operator).
Corner cases are dissected by example.

The section should return to the examples given in the previous section, and explain more fully how the detailed proposal makes those examples work.

Drawbacks

Why should we not do this?

Rationale and alternatives

Why is this design the best in the space of possible designs?
What other designs have been considered and what is the rationale for not choosing them?
What is the impact of not doing this?

Prior art

Discuss prior art, both the good and the bad, in relation to this proposal. A few examples of what this can include are:

Does a similar feature/operator exist in other projects?
Is there an existing workaround that is commonly used?

This section is intended to encourage you as an author to think about the lessons from other projects to provide readers of your RFC with a fuller picture. If there is no prior art, that is fine - your ideas are interesting to us whether they are brand new or if it is an adaptation from other languages.

Note that while precedent is some motivation, it does not on its own motivate an RFC.

Unresolved questions

What parts of the design do you expect to resolve through the RFC process before this gets merged?
What parts of the design do you expect to resolve through the implementation of this feature before stabilization?
What related issues do you consider out of scope for this RFC that could be addressed in the future independently of the solution that comes out of this RFC?

Future possibilities

Think about what the natural extension and evolution of your proposal would be and how it would affect the standard and project as a whole in a holistic way. Try to use this section as a tool to more fully consider all possible interactions with the project and language in your proposal.

This is also a good place to "dump ideas", if they are out of scope for the RFC you are writing but otherwise related.

If you have tried and cannot think of any future possibilities, you may simply state that you cannot think of anything.

Note that having something written down in the future-possibilities section is not a reason to accept the current or a future RFC; such notes should be in the section on motivation or rationale in this or subsequent RFCs. The section merely provides additional information.