From 2a9ecb7efd918b5e621c0c82f3deeeb9df037327 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Linus Nordberg <linus@nordberg.se>
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2022 16:37:39 +0200
Subject: add proposal

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 doc/proposals/2022-04-restructure-repositories.md | 109 ++++++++++++++++++++++
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 create mode 100644 doc/proposals/2022-04-restructure-repositories.md

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+# Background
+
+Current repository structure at git.sigsum.org:
+
+    $ tree -L 2
+    .
+    ├── research
+    │   └── README.md
+    ├── sigsum
+    │   ├── archive
+    │   ├── doc
+    │   ├── hugo
+    │   ├── issues
+    │   ├── LICENSE
+    │   └── README.md
+    ├── sigsum-lib-go
+    │   ├── cmd
+    │   ├── go.mod
+    │   ├── issues
+    │   ├── LICENSE
+    │   ├── pkg
+    │   └── README.md
+    ├── sigsum-log-go
+    │   ├── cmd
+    │   ├── go.mod
+    │   ├── go.sum
+    │   ├── integration
+    │   ├── issues
+    │   ├── LICENSE
+    │   ├── pkg
+    │   └── README.md
+    ├── sigsum-tools-go
+    │   ├── cmd
+    │   ├── go.mod
+    │   ├── go.sum
+    │   ├── LICENSE
+    │   ├── pkg
+    │   └── README.md
+    ├── sigsum-witness-py
+    │   ├── issues
+    │   ├── LICENSE
+    │   ├── README.md
+    │   └── sigsum-witness.py
+    ├── sysadm-tickets
+    │   └── README
+    └── testing
+        ├── cmd
+        ├── hello
+        └── hi
+
+Here's what we don't like about the current structure:
+
+  a) "sigsum" is not an intuitive name for documentation, notes, etc.
+  It hogs the top-most namespace and is inconsistent compared to other
+  repos (could be "sigsum-docs").
+
+  b) "sigsum" in all repo names is redundant.  We already have all
+  repositories grouped at git.sigsum.org.  Go module names have
+  redundancy too (git.sigsum.org/sigsum-lib-go).
+
+  c) unclear where everything "not log server and not sigsum lib"
+  should be placed.  Both now and as we keep adding more tools and
+  other running components like monitors.
+
+# Proposal
+
+  1. Keep "sigsum" repo name.  We shared many links to this
+     repository, avoid breakage.
+
+  2. Move towards generic repositories, per language.
+
+     - sigsum-go, "lib + tools that in the long run don't pull in the whole world"
+     - log-go, "depends on sigsum-go, pulls in other log server specific stuff too"
+     - sigsum-py, "witness + tools"
+
+  3. Remove repos "research" and "sysadm-tickets".  No use or planned usage.
+
+Connecting this to the problems we had with the current repo structure:
+
+  c) Rule of thumb is to place <lang> stuff in sigsum-<lang>.  If
+  there is a reason not to, break it out into a separate repo without
+  "sigsum" in the name.  E.g., log-go and monitor-go, both of which
+  will likely have to be more permissive about dependencies.  It is
+  crusial that generic repos are easy to use, reuse, pull-in, review,
+  and maintain.
+
+  b) Fixed to some extent.  One strength of the new structure is that,
+  e.g., sigsum-go signals that "this is where you should look for
+  sigsum stuff in Go".  We expect that most newcomers will be more
+  interested in the lib or tools rather than Trillian stuff. If you
+  are looking for "not the generic stuff", you probably know where to
+  go already.
+
+  a) Not fixed.  There will however be relatively few repositories
+  that don't have a language ending (-go, -py, etc).  This likely
+  signals that "this is a sigsum portal".  This is further mitigated
+  by good repo descriptions on the listing at git.sigsum.org.
+
+The plan is to do the above restructuring after our v0 API changes are in place.
+
+# Examples
+
+An import in log-go:
+
+    import "git.sigsum.org/sigsum-go/pkg/types"
+
+Installing the sigsum tool:
+
+    $ go install git.sigsum.org/sigsum-go/cmd/sigsum@latest
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