Erratum — draft-fossil-submanifests-00 Abstract / §1.3

Document	draft-fossil-submanifests-00
Section	Abstract; 1.3 — Status of This Specification
Type	Editorial (the text says nothing implements the specification; two implementations do)
Status	Applied in draft-fossil-submanifests-00 (2026-10-19)
Reported	2026-10-19
Submitter	Dan Mestas
Found via	Filing the first errata from implementation experience against a text that claims there is none

1. Summary

The abstract ends "it does not describe deployed behavior, and no implementation exists", and §1.3 opens "Nothing implements this specification; every S-bearing artifact in existence is a test fixture." Both were true when the draft was written. zit writes, reads and serves sub-manifests, go-libfossil writes and reads them, and the two have been tested against each other; the errata filed against §6.3, §7.2 and §8.1 all come from that experience. The status text must say so, and must say what has not changed: Fossil does not implement the specification, the flag-day property of the closed card alphabet stands, and the provisional-phase rules of §8.2 still apply.

2. The text in error

Abstract: "It derives from a 2010 design note; it does not describe deployed behavior, and no implementation exists."

§1.3, first paragraph, from "Nothing implements this specification" to "before the first writer exists."

3. Corrected text

Abstract, replace the last sentence with:

It derives from a 2010 design note. Two implementations, zit and go-libfossil, write and read the format and interoperate; Fossil itself does not implement it.

§1.3, replace the first paragraph with:

Two implementations exist: zit writes and reads sub-manifests and serves them, and go-libfossil writes and reads them. The two interoperate, and the errata of this document record where each departed from the text and which side changed. Fossil does not implement this specification. The closed card alphabet ([FossilArtifact], Section 4.2.2) still makes deployment a flag day -- every reader of a repository must understand sub-manifests before any writer emits one into it -- so the gates of Section 7.2 and Section 8 keep S-bearing artifacts away from readers that do not. Conformance of two implementations establishes nothing about the wider ecosystem (Section 9). This document folds into a -01 revision of [FossilArtifact] only after further implementation experience; until then [FossilArtifact] remains authoritative for deployed behavior, and the provisional-phase rules of Section 8.2 apply to every repository containing an S-bearing artifact.

4. Implementations

None affected; the change is to the status text.