Meta-RFC: Prior art

[Centril]

🖼️ Rendered

📝 Summary

Adds a Prior art section to the RFC template where RFC authors may discuss the experience of other programming languages and their communities with respect to what is being proposed. This section may also discuss theoretical work such as papers.

💖 Thanks

My thanks to @ashleygwilliams for reviewing.
I'd also like to thank @nagisa for the neat section naming and
@scottmcm for giving me great critique which improved the RFC a lot.

[steveklabnik]

👍

[aturon]

I think this is a great step. Kicking off core team review:

@rfcbot fcp merge

[rfcbot]

Team member @aturon has proposed to merge this. The next step is review by the rest of the tagged teams:

• @Mark-Simulacrum
• @aidanhs
• @alexcrichton
• @ashleygwilliams
• @aturon
• @carols10cents
• @nikomatsakis
• @nrc
• @steveklabnik
• @wycats

No concerns currently listed.

Once a majority of reviewers approve (and none object), this will enter its final comment period. If you spot a major issue that hasn't been raised at any point in this process, please speak up!

See this document for info about what commands tagged team members can give me.

[wycats]

I'd like the section to communicate that there are cases where Rust intentionally diverges from common or popular prior art.

An example of this would be exceptions: Rust doesn't have them. In an RFC to add additional sugar to our Result system to make it similar to exceptions, it would be important to identify why the intentional divergence we already made isn't applicable to the sugar. This is, of course, exactly what the discussion about using catch terminology is about, and this RFC provides a great place for these considerations to come to a fore.

[est31]

👍 This section would have been badly needed back when this ? operator got added which now sadly means something completely different as in other languages.

You should add as drawback however that a longer template makes it harder to contribute to the RFC process via writing an RFC as you now need to fill in more sections. It might also intimidate people who don't know many other languages and think they are expected to know a wide range of them otherwise their contribution is not welcome.

[Centril]

@wycats @est31 - I've tried to address your concerns... Tell me what you think =)

[rfcbot]

🔔 This is now entering its final comment period, as per the review above. 🔔

[est31]

@Centril sorry I should have said it earlier, but it is perfect. Thank you!

[rfcbot]

The final comment period is now complete.

[Centril]

Huzzah! The RFC is merged!

Tracking issue: None, the RFC is self executing.

[glaebhoerl]

(Should currently active RFC PRs also be updated to have a prior art section?)

[Centril]

@glaebhoerl: I wouldn't say it is required for RFCs before the new format, but it would be nice, and reviewers can help with providing prior art where such is known. You could also create PRs against the PRs... =)