JIP-6: Program metadata

JIP-6.md

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+# JIP-6: Program metadata
+
+PVM code blobs as defined in the Gray Paper begin with a variable-length metadata section. This JIP
+proposes a standard format for this metadata.
+
+## Format
+
+Given three octet sequences which are UTF-8 encoded strings program-name $\mathbf{p} \in \mathbb{Y}$, version $\mathbf{v} \in \mathbb{Y}$ and licence $\mathbf{l} \in \mathbb{Y}$, together with a sequence of authors, each of them such strings $\mathbf{A} \in [\mathbb{Y}]$, we define the encoded metadata $\mathbf{m}$ as:
+
+$$
+\mathbf{m} \equiv [0] \frown \mathcal{E}(\left\updownarrow\mathbf{p}\right., \left\updownarrow\mathbf{v}\right., \left\updownarrow\mathbf{l}\right., \left\updownarrow[\left\updownarrow\mathbf{a}\right.\mid\mathbf{a} \in \mathbf{A}]\right.)
+$$
+
+Writers of metadata should not include any data beyond this, however any such data should be
+ignored by parsers.
+
+## Further conventions
+
+This section describes further conventions on the format of individual metadata fields. Metadata
+parsers should gracefully handle metadata that does not conform to these conventions.
+
+The program name should contain only alphanumeric characters, underscores, and hyphens. Rust
+programs should use the crate name as the program name.
+
+The license field should contain an SPDX license expression.
+
+Each member of the authors sequence should identify a person or organization. An email address may
+be included within angled brackets at the end of each author entry. For example, `Parity
+Technologies <[email protected]>`.