So you are saying I should beat up on the tool chain people that have not 
followed the spec. I tried that already 😊 , but since I can redefine the 
prefixes locally as a workaround, and I couldn’t convince them it was an issue, 
it fell by the wayside with one tool so far.

If  the spec was more precise it would settle the arguments.
Regards,
Don

From: Andy Bierman <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 1:23 PM
To: Don Fedyk <[email protected]>
Cc: tom petch <[email protected]>; Mahesh Jethanandani 
<[email protected]>; Juergen Schoenwaelder 
<[email protected]>; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [netmod] Use of prefixes in YANG models



On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 10:07 AM Don Fedyk 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Clarity and consistency would help.

Many of the supporting tool chains are picky about prefixes. IE they must be 
the same as in the definition file.  I have a case where yanglint wants "local 
prefixes or derived-from(-or-self) construct" for an local identity in an xpath 
statement. (either remedy seems to work.) I argued for the prefixes in but 
others argue they are not necessary but I cannot validate without them.


The tool makers should understand that YANG prefixes are not required to be 
unique.
It is understood that short character sequences have a high probability of 
duplication.
So what if the server wants to support 2 modules with the same prefix defined 
in the YANG module?
Is it not clear that the ENTIRE point of having the prefix-stmt in the 
import-stmt is
because the imported modules may have prefixes that collide?



Andy

"not(derived-from(../../bridge-type,'two-port-mac-relay-bridge'))" works 
(prefix/no prefix)
But "../../bridge-type != 'dot1q:two-port-mac-relay-bridge'      works too.

Thanks
Don



-----Original Message-----
From: netmod <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On 
Behalf Of tom petch
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 7:50 AM
To: Mahesh Jethanandani 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Juergen 
Schoenwaelder 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [netmod] Use of prefixes in YANG models

From: netmod <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on 
behalf of Juergen Schoenwaelder 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: 18 March 2021 08:05

We often do not do a good job in distinguishing technical requirements from 
usage guidelines. (And RFC 2119 keywords make things worse.)

As far as I recall, the intent of the RFC 8407 text was to say that it is 
helpful for _humans_ to always use 'if:name' when you refer to the leaf 'name' 
defined in 'ietf-interfaces' or 'yang:date-and-time' when you refer to 
'date-and-time' defined in 'ietf-yang-types'.

I believe we agreed that module authors assigning a prefix different from the 
default prefix during an import should have either technical reasons for doing 
so (resolving prefixes clashes) or some other good reason to depart from the 
general guideline aiming to reduce human confusion.

<tp>
To make an abstract concept concrete, draft-ietf-babel-yang-model imports yang 
types from RFC6991 and gives it the prefix yt: as in yt:date-and-time or 
yt:counter32.  An early YANG Doctor review by Radek did not comment on this 
aspect of the I-D.  More recently, I have.

Tom Petch



/js (who stopped believing that RFC 2119 keywords are helpful years ago)

On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 05:03:11PM -0700, Mahesh Jethanandani wrote:
> I have seen the debate on the use of prefixes in YANG models, specially as it 
> relates to their use when importing a model. I think it would nice to be 
> clear on what is required, what is nice, and what is not ok to do. I do not 
> want to confuse this discussion with the length of the prefix, which I 
> believe is somewhat related but not the same discussion.
>
> RFC 7950 says:
>
>    All prefixes, including the prefix for the module itself, MUST be
>    unique within the module or submodule.
>
> This is a requirement, as is clear by the MUST.
>
> Then RFC 7950 says:
>
>    To
>    improve readability of YANG modules, the prefix defined by a module
>    SHOULD be used when the module is imported, unless there is a
>    conflict.
>
> It also says:
>
>    When used inside the "import" statement, the "prefix" statement
>    defines the prefix to be used when accessing definitions inside the
>    imported module.
>
> Clearly, the scope of the "prefix" statement used with an "import" statement 
> is limited to the module where it is imported and does not impact the 
> imported module. As such, and because it is a SHOULD and not a MUST, this is 
> a "nice to have"  without conflicts, but one would not be wrong using a 
> different prefix from the one defined in the imported module. Add to this, 
> most tools, e.g. pyang or yanglint do not complain if you do define a 
> different prefix when there are no conflicts. I have not seen a problem in 
> the implementation of the module when the prefix is different.
>
> RFC 8407 confuses this whole situation by saying:
>
>       The proper module prefix MUST be used for all identifiers imported
>       from other modules.
>
> which as written is true for identifiers (but not for other types of 
> imports??). Besides, it does not define what is "proper module prefix". In 
> the absence of a proper definition, one should follow what RFC 7950 says.
>
> Comments?
>
> Mahesh Jethanandani
> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
>
>
>
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> netmod mailing list
> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod


--
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <https://www.jacobs-university.de/>

_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod

_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod

_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod

Reply via email to