diff --git a/proposals/1804-advertising-capable-room-versions.md b/proposals/1804-advertising-capable-room-versions.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..684bd52439a --- /dev/null +++ b/proposals/1804-advertising-capable-room-versions.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +# Proposal for advertising capable room versions to clients + +Currently clients need to guess at which room versions the server supports, if any. This is particularly +difficult to do as it generally requires knowing the state of the ecosystem and what versions are +available and how keen users are to upgrade their servers and clients. The impossible judgement call +for when to encourage people to upgrade shouldn't be impossible, or even a judgement call. + + +## Proposal + +Building off of [MSC1753](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1753) (capabilities API) and +the [recommendations laid out for room versions](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1773/files#diff-1436075794bb304492ca6953a6692cd0R463), +this proposal suggests a `m.room_versions` capability be introduced like the following: + +```json +{ + "capabilities": { + "m.room_versions": { + "default": "1", + "available": { + "1": "stable", + "2": "stable", + "state-res-v2-test": "unstable", + "event-ids-as-hashes": "unstable", + "3": "future-scifi-label" + } + } + } +} +``` + +Clients are encouraged to make use of this capability to determine if the server supports a given +version, and at what level of stability. Anything not flagged explicitly as `stable` should be treated +as `unstable` (ie: `future-scifi-label` is the same as `unstable`). + +The default version is the version that the server is using to create new rooms with. Clients can +make the assumption that the default version is a stable version. + +Clients should encourage people with sufficient permissions to perform an upgrade to upgrade their +rooms to the `default` room version when the room is using an `unstable` version. + + +## Potential issues + +Changes aren't pushed to the client, which means clients may want to poll this endpoint on some +heuristic instead. For example, clients may want to poll the endpoint weekly or when the user relaunches +the client. Clients may also wish to provide users a way to upgrade without considering the capabilities +of the server, expecting that the server may not support the user-provided version - the intention +being such a feature would be used by eager room administrators which do not want to relaunch their +client, for example.