FIP Discussion: Change type of Label in DealProposal to be []byte, rather than String

[laudiacay]

Background
Also see filecoin-project/specs-actors#1248 for important relevant discussion.

The DealProposal Label is not guaranteed to be UTF-8, but is assumed to be in some client implementations. This is causing trouble for said implementations. People suggested either enforcing UTF-8 (this is more difficult) or switching the type to be a byte array that can be interpreted as needed. Discussion settled on the latter.

Proposal
Change the type of the Label field to be a []byte, rather than a string. Draft PR with these changes inside is here: filecoin-project/specs-actors#1496.

[kaitlin-beegle]

Hi @laudiacay! It looks like work remains ongoing for this proposal, which is great.

Once these details are set, a FIP draft can be written according to the guidance in FIP0001 and pushed to the repo. I will then work through the process of facilitating community acceptance of the FIP draft.

If you have any questions about this process, please feel free to ask!

[laudiacay]

filecoin-project/specs-actors#1248 Work done!

[arajasek]

This needs to get nudged along if we want it in the next network upgrade -- I believe it's currently impl complete, but in the pending next branch of specs-actors.

[BlocksOnAChain]

@kaitlin-beegle can we move/do we have all the needed elements to move this for the V15 upgrade since it’s in the "code complete " state from our side?
CC: @jennijuju @laudiacay @arajasek

[kaitlin-beegle]

@BlocksOnAChain you bet we do! Thanks for flagging that this is technically complete. We can move this item to last call status this week. I expect it will be approved without issue, but diligence requires that the last call period last for at least two weeks.

I would expect that this item will be approved for v15 incorporation by Friday, January 21, but that implementation teams should prepare to add the change in their calibnet upgrades.

[kaitlin-beegle]

After connecting with @laudiacay and @arajasek, it was confirmed that this FIP is no longer ready for 'last call' status. This FIP proposal will instead be moved back to the discussion forum, where it can be reconsidered for future upgrades.

@laudiacay, it's my understanding that there are two technical paths that we can take to move this forward: pursuing a more technically complex implementation within the existing market modules, or waiting until markets are decoupled from implementations. Any idea yet which is a better path?