This is a simple Python 3 tool to download and review IETF documents, such as Internet-Drafts or RFCs, and comes packaged as a single ietf-reviewtool script.

ietf-reviewtool offers several different review tools:

• fetch downloads items (I-Ds, charters, RFCs, etc.) for review

• fetch-agenda downloads all items on the agenda of the next IESG telechat for review

• strip strips headers, footers and pagination from items, similar to the earlier rfcstrip tool

• review extracts inline reviews from the indicated items and formats them for sharing by email or submission to the IETF datatracker, with some functionality that is similar to the earlier idcomments tool

This is a work in progress. Additional functionality will be added over time, so there is a chance this documentation only covers a subset of what the actual tool offers. You can get command line help on the various tools by passing --help to ietf-reviewtool and its sub-tools.

You can install this via PyPI:

pip install ietf-reviewtool

An example workflow of the tool is as follows.

You first download the item for review:

ietf-reviewtool fetch rfc1925.txt

This downloads the text version of RFC1925 into a text file named rfc1925.txt and (by default) performs a strip operation on the file.

You will then open the stripped rfc1925.txt for review in your preferred text editor.

You can flag issues of three different severity levels, namely, "discuss", "comment" and "nit". (These levels are inspired by the IESG review process.)

In order to flag an issue of a given severity level, enter a new line at an appropriate location in the document that reads DISCUSS:, COMMENT: or NIT:.

Using rfc1925.txt as an example and using *** to indicate the added review content, you can flag an "inline" issue like this:

2. The Fundamental Truths

   (1)  It Has To Work.

***COMMENT: Well, duh.***

After saving the changed rfc1925.txt, you can then extract a formatted review as:

Section 2, paragraph 2, comment:
Well, duh.

See below for how to extract a review.

Using DISCUSS: or NIT: instead of COMMENT: will change the severity of the issue, as appropriate.

It is possible quote part of the original document, to give the review some context, like this:

***COMMENT:***
   (3)  With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
***Can we stop picking on pigs or pigeons?***

This will produce the following review:

Section 2, paragraph 5, comment:
>    (3)  With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is

Can we stop picking on pigs or pigeons?

To quickly flag some editing nits, such as spelling errors, you can simply edit the text directly, correcting the nit. For example, to flag an existing spelling error in rfc1925.txt (where "agglutinate" is misspelled as "aglutenate"), you would simply correct the word in the text:

   (5)  It is always possible to ***agglutinate*** multiple separate problems
        into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases
        this is a bad idea.

When extracting the formatted review, such inline corrections are added to the "nits" section in "diff" format:

Section 2, paragraph 7, nit:
-    (5)  It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems
-                                       ^
+    (5)  It is always possible to agglutinate multiple separate problems
+                                    +   ^

After editing a source file, you can extract a formatted review with:

ietf-reviewtool review rfc1925.txt

With the given example, this would result in the following output:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 2, paragraph 2, comment:
Well, duh.

Section 2, paragraph 5, comment:
>    (3)  With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is

Can we not always pick on pigs or pigeons?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NIT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 2, paragraph 7, nit:
-    (5)  It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems
-                                       ^
+    (5)  It is always possible to agglutinate multiple separate problems
+                                    +   ^

You can persist settings in a configuration file instead of passing them on the command line every time. The tool looks for a configuration file at:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/ietf-reviewtool/config
• Linux: ~/.config/ietf-reviewtool/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ietf-reviewtool/config)
• Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\ietf-reviewtool\config

You can also specify a custom configuration file with --config <path>.

The configuration file uses configobj format. Use [global] for options that apply to all commands, and subcommand-specific sections like [review] for subcommand options. Option names match the CLI flags:

[global]
verbose = 1
width = 100
datatracker = 'https://datatracker.ietf.org/'

[review]
github-id = '@yourusername'
role = 'AD'
check-grammar = False
grammar-skip-rules = 'WHITESPACE_RULE,EN_QUOTES'

[fetch]
strip = True
fetch-xml = False

[fetch-agenda]
make-directory = True
save-agenda = True

Command-line arguments override configuration file values, which override defaults.

The ideas for some of these tools came from some of Henrik Levkowetz's earlier bash scripts. In the case of the strip tool, most of the original regular expressions were taken from his rfcstrip awk script.