> The idea to encode all relevant semantics of a type in a type's name
> has far-reaching consequences:
> 
> - Are we going to deprecate counter32 and introduce
>   non-zero-based-counter32 because we have also zero-based-counter32?
> 
> - Do we introduce date-and-time-with-optional-zone-offset and
>   deprecate date-and-time?

I wish we had guiding principles for such naming decisions or, perhaps, it is a 
matter of the type's definition.  

The current date-and-time is not ambiguous because it asserts that either a 'Z' 
or an offset is present, making impossible for implementations to assume a 
zoneless form.  Whereas the current ip-address is ambiguous because it silently 
accepts the "without" form, leading to surprise in some implementations when 
the expanded form is "unexpectedly" passed.

Having well-defined guidance could prevent future missteps.



> The definition of ip-address (published in 2010) was the right thing
> to do since the optional zone index can disambiguate IP addresses in
> situations where this is needed. In 2013, we also provided the
> ip-address-no-zone definition to be used in situations where there is
> never a need to disambiguate IP addresses (e.g., when the zone is
> known from the context).
> 
> 
> Trying to focus just on this proposal, not extrapolate the trend...
> 
> For 10 years we have had 2 typedefs for IP address:
> 
>   - ip-address
>   - ip-address-no-zone
> 
> This should be enough (even without reading the module!) to determine
> 1 form has a zone, and 1 does not.
> 
> But nobody reads the YANG module so they didn't know about ip-address-no-zone.
> So how will they know about ip-address-zone either?

Because tooling would flag "ip-address" as deprecated and the description 
statement would say to use the "with-zone" form?


> YANG Catalog search shows 1486 modules import the ip-address typedef.
> I suspect the number is about twice that.
> 
> So we want to tell the world:
> 
> "You have to stop using ip-address and use this new type instead". 
> 
> "Why? What's wrong with it?"
> 
> "Nothing. We decided after 13 years we like this name better."

A number of issues were raised (misconfigurations, OpenConfig, etc.). 



Kent // contributor








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