Proposing New Features

Cloud Foundry uses a light-weight process for designing and proposing new features and functionality. The recommended approach is to post to the mailing lists before you start. The email proposal should include a corresponding design document that allows for collaborative comments. Filing a github issue on a GitHub repository is alternate mechanism which will creates a story in the team's tracker, but not as many people in the community follow the GitHub issues as the mailing lists, so for maximum visibility we recommend posting to the mailing lists.

The process we use to develop Cloud Foundry projects puts the responsibility defining "the what" on the Product Manager for each team. Before starting work on a new feature, in order to have it have a high chance of it being accepted without issues or surprises, it is essential to work with the Product Manager in advance to get their alignment and buy-in for the "the what". If an agreement is reached the Product Manager for "the what" for a new capability, then the Product Manager can arrange a discussion with the development team that owns the repositories in question for a discussion on "the how" for the contribution. This may include details on how the code should be structured. Examples of things the development team may be very opinionated about include design patterns, tests, how much to contribute with each pull request, using a feature branch vs master, using feature-flags, how to expose configuration and more.