TROV Versioning Strategy and Roadmap

TROV Versioning Strategy and Roadmap#

DRAFT

This document is a draft and subject to revision. Please submit feedback or report issues.

How TROV versions are numbered, what stability guarantees each version provides, and the roadmap from the current draft (0.1) to a stable 1.0 release. Covers namespace management, documentation lifecycle, repository structure, and resolution of URI-qualified terms.

Document Section	Description
Design Goals	Design goals governing TROV’s evolution
Version Numbering	Pre-1.0 vs post-1.0 stability and namespace URIs
What Constitutes a Version	What’s in 0.1 (current draft) and what 1.0 requires
Extensibility	How adopters add institution-specific terms safely
Breaking vs Non-Breaking Changes	Classification table for post-1.0 changes
Repository Structure	trov and trace-specification layouts, URI resolution
Roadmap	Four phases: stabilize 0.1, evolve 0.x, release 1.0, governance/maintenance 1.x

For the vocabulary terms themselves, see the TROV Vocabulary Reference. For the JSON-LD document format, see TRO Declaration Format. For adding institution-specific metadata to TRO declarations, see the TROV Extension Guide.

Design Goals#

Grounded in practice. TROV addresses transparency problems faced by real organizations, describes capabilities systems can feasibly implement, and answers verification questions reviewers commonly ask.
Two perspectives, one vocabulary. TRO declarations are simultaneously valid JSON and valid RDF. Both perspectives remain first-class across versions. (See TRO Declaration Design.)
Stability for adopters. Every version is identifiable. Breaking changes are explicit and rare.
Extensibility without conflict. Adopters include institution-specific metadata in TRO declarations using their own namespaces. Broadly applicable extensions may be standardized in future TROV versions. (See Extensibility for details.)
Low barrier to adoption. Any community producing computational research artifacts can benefit from TROV.

Version Numbering#

TROV uses semantic versioning with different stability guarantees before and after 1.0.

Pre-1.0 (Evolving)#

Pre-1.0 versions (0.1, 0.2, etc.) are working drafts that may include breaking changes — terms renamed, removed, or given incompatible semantics. Each 0.x version receives its own namespace URI; when superseded, its documentation is frozen into a snapshot page with migration guidance.

Post-1.0 (Stable)#

Once 1.0 is released, the standard semantic versioning rules apply:

MAJOR (e.g. 1.0 → 2.0): Breaking changes: terms removed, renamed, or given incompatible semantics. Existing valid TRO declarations may no longer validate against the latest version. New namespace URI.
MINOR (e.g. 1.0 → 1.1): Add-only: new capability types, new attribute types, new optional properties. No terms removed, renamed, or redefined. Existing TRO declarations remain valid against the new version. Same namespace URI.
No patch versions. Description clarifications and typo fixes in vocabulary files are editorial changes that can be made without changing the version number.

Minor versions share a namespace because they only add optional terms. The ontology file at the namespace URI is updated to include new terms, but existing declarations remain valid — the new terms are available, not required. Only a major version bump changes the namespace URI and triggers a frozen snapshot of the superseded version.

Version Lifecycle#

Each version passes through a simple lifecycle:

Status	Meaning
Draft	Under active development. The namespace URI works and adopters can build against it, but terms may still change before release.
Released	Stable. The terms defined in this version will not be removed, renamed, or redefined. Future minor versions may add new terms at the same namespace URI.
Retired	Superseded by a newer version. Documentation frozen into a snapshot page with migration guidance. Files remain available at their URIs indefinitely.

The namespace URI stays the same across states — trov/0.1# is trov/0.1# whether the version is draft or released. Adopters do not need to change their @context on release day.

When a version is released or retired, both trace-specification and trov repos are tagged trov/0.1, trov/0.2, etc. Each tagged release includes built documentation artifacts (Markdown source, per-page PDFs, and the whole-book PDF) as release assets, providing a permanent record of the specification as it stood at that version.

Namespace URIs#

Each version that may contain breaking changes relative to its predecessor receives its own namespace URI:

Version	Namespace URI	Status
(pre-release)	`https://w3id.org/trace/2023/05/trov#`	Retired. Frozen snapshot. Pre-Release Reference [coming soon].
0.1	`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1#`	Draft. Concrete target for implementers to converge on.
0.2, 0.3, …	`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.2#`, …	Future pre-1.0 versions. Each gets its own namespace.
1.0	`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/1#`	Planned.
1.1, 1.2, …	`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/1#`	Future minor versions share the major-version namespace.
2.0	`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/2#`	No current plans.

Namespace History#

The pre-release namespace https://w3id.org/trace/2023/05/trov# was minted in May 2023 using a date-based URI pattern. TROV now uses a version-based pattern (trace/trov/{version}#).

The pre-release namespace is retired. TRO declarations using the 2023/05 namespace require conversion for TROV 0.1 conformance. The 2023/05 URI will resolve to the Pre-Release Vocabulary Reference [coming soon], which documents the pre-release terms and provides migration guidance.

Documentation Lifecycle#

On main, trov-vocabulary.md always describes the latest released version (or the current draft if nothing has been released yet). Draft work for the next version happens on a branch (e.g. 0.2-draft). When the new version is ready to release we:

Snapshot trov-vocabulary.md to a version-specific file (e.g. trov-0.1.md).
Merge the draft branch into main.

The snapshot is a self-contained page: term inventory, known issues, migration steps. Other documents (tro-declaration-format.md, trov-extension-guide.md, etc.) are updated on the draft branch as needed and merged along with the vocabulary reference.

Post-1.0: The same workflow continues. Minor versions are backwards-compatible (add-only), but trov-vocabulary.md is still snapshotted before each merge. This keeps every version visible side by side at the head of main, and lets someone receiving a TRO that references a specific TROV version look up what terms were available when that TRO was produced.

Snapshots and namespace URIs serve different purposes. Namespace URIs track compatibility — all 1.x versions share a namespace because they are backwards-compatible. Snapshots track what terms each version defined. TRO declarations post-0.1 include an explicit vocabulary version property so consumers can determine the specific minor version without parsing the namespace URI.

2023/05/trov#   →  frozen snapshot (trov-prerelease.md)
trov/0.1#       →  living docs on main (current)
trov/0.2#       →  trov-vocabulary.md snapshotted to trov-0.1.md, 0.2-draft branch merged
  ...
trov/1#         →  last 0.x frozen, living docs describe latest 1.x release
trov/1# (1.1)   →  trov-vocabulary.md snapshotted to trov-1.0.md, 1.1-draft branch merged
trov/1# (1.2)   →  trov-vocabulary.md snapshotted to trov-1.1.md, 1.2-draft branch merged
  ...
trov/2#         →  1.x frozen, new namespace, living docs describe latest 2.x release

What Constitutes a Version#

TROV 0.1 (Current Draft — Stabilization Target)#

Namespace: https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1#

Status: First formally documented version. Based on pre-release implementations: property names reconciled, known bugs fixed, term list curated.

Goal: Produce a documented, testable baseline. Descriptive of deployed reality, with known issues resolved.

Authoritative sources (in priority order):

tro-utils source code — the reference implementation. What it produces is what 0.1 means.
trov.ttl — the formal OWL ontology. Currently incomplete; will be updated to match the above.
trov-shacl.ttl — SHACL validation shapes. Currently partial; will be extended.
TROV Vocabulary Reference (trov-vocabulary.md) — the human-readable specification.

What is in 0.1 (draft — under discussion and subject to change before release):

The classes, properties, and named individuals documented in the TROV Vocabulary Reference.
The JSON-LD structure documented in the TRO Declaration Format.
Support for GPG and X.509/CMS signing mechanisms.

What must happen before 0.1 is considered stable:

Reconcile property name divergences between tro-utils and hand-written examples.
Update trov.ttl to include all properties and classes actually in use.
Enable w3id.org namespace resolution.
Design signing-identity representation that works across signing mechanisms (GPG, X.509/CMS, and others).
Reconcile duplicate capability types.
Add trov:vocabularyVersion property for declaring the TROV vocabulary version used in a TRO declaration.

TROV 1.0 (First Stable Release)#

Goal: A stable vocabulary with guaranteed backwards compatibility, tooling for validation and reporting, and documentation sufficient for independent adoption without direct guidance from the TROV maintainers.

Expected capabilities (introduced incrementally in 0.x releases):

Formal namespace resolution via w3id.org with content negotiation. HTML for browsers, Turtle and JSON-LD for RDF tools.
Published @context file at a stable URI for reference. We recommend that TRO declarations embed the context inline so they remain self-contained.
JSON Schema for basic validation of TRO declarations.
Full set of SHACL shapes for validating TRO declarations and TRS certificates.
Complete warrant chain validation (TRO attributes → TRP attributes → TRS capabilities) implemented in tooling.
Signing mechanism formally specified (algorithm-agnostic, supporting GPG and X.509/CMS at minimum).
At least one standard TRO package format specified (ZIP layout, relationship between declaration, signature, and payload).
trov-validate tool for deep compliance testing (warrant chain completeness, cross-reference integrity).
trov-report tool for human-readable summaries.

Extensibility: Adopter-Specific Terms#

Adopters will need to include metadata specific to their systems — container runtime details, internal system versions, resource utilization metrics, and similar operational data. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see the TROV Extension Guide.

Rules for adopter extensions:

Use your own namespace for institution-specific terms. For example, an adopter might use mytrs: for system-specific metadata (the prefix shorthand is local to each declaration; what matters is the URI it expands to). This guarantees no collision with future TROV terms.
Unprefixed or trov:-prefixed terms not in the vocabulary are non-conformant. A validator will flag them. This protects adopters from silently depending on terms that may change or conflict with future TROV additions.
Propose new trov: terms. If an extension proves broadly applicable, it can be proposed for inclusion in a future TROV minor version.
The @context is extensible. Adopters can add their own namespace prefixes to the @context block alongside the standard TROV prefixes.

Example — adopter-specific metadata alongside TROV terms:

"@context": [
    {
        "rdf":  "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#",
        "rdfs": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#",
        "trov": "https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1#",
        "schema": "https://schema.org",
        "mytrs": "https://example.org/mytrs#"
    }
],
...
"mytrs:version": "0.0.1",
"mytrs:architecture": "x86_64",
"mytrs:kernelVersion": "6.14.0-37-generic",
"mytrs:imageRepoDigests": ["dataeditors/stata18_5-mp@sha256:3699b018..."]

Breaking vs Non-Breaking Changes#

The following table describes how changes are classified after 1.0 (pre-1.0, any of these changes may occur in any 0.x release).

Change	Breaking?	Post-1.0 version bump
Change the description of an existing term	No	None
Add a new optional property	No	Minor
Add a new capability type	No	Minor
Add a new TRP or TRO attribute type	No	Minor
Rename a property or class	Yes	Major
Remove a property or class	Yes	Major
Change a property from optional to required	Yes	Major
Change the semantics of an existing term	Yes	Major
Change the namespace URI	Yes	Major
Add a new required property	Yes	Major

Repository Structure and Namespace Resolution#

The trov repository#

The trov repository is the source for all machine-readable vocabulary files. It contains one directory per version, and the GitHub Actions workflow deploys these directories to GitHub Pages:

trov/
  README.md
  .github/workflows/deploy.yml      ← generates HTML docs, deploys to GitHub Pages
  0.1/
    context.jsonld                   ← JSON-LD context file (for reference)
    tro-schema.json                  ← JSON Schema for TRO declaration validation
    trov-shacl.ttl                   ← SHACL validation shapes
    trov.jsonld                      ← OWL ontology (JSON-LD format)
    trov.ttl                         ← OWL ontology (Turtle)
  prerelease/
    trov.ttl                         ← frozen OWL ontology (2023/05/trov# namespace)

What goes in the trov repo: master copies of the machine-readable artifacts that consumers fetch programmatically via GitHub Pages — ontology files, validation schemas, SHACL shapes.

What does not go in the trov repo: human-readable documentation (that lives in trace-specification/docs/).

When a version is superseded, its directory is frozen in place. The files remain available at the same URIs indefinitely.

The trace-specification repository#

Human-readable documentation lives in trace-specification:

trace-specification/
  docs/
    tro-declaration-format.md        ← living declaration format guide (current version)
    trov-0.1.md                      ← snapshot of trov-vocabulary.md when 0.1 is superseded
    trov-prerelease.md               ← frozen snapshot (retired pre-release)
    trov-versioning-and-roadmap.md   ← this document (version-independent)
    trov-vocabulary.md               ← living vocabulary reference (current version)

The docs/ directory always describes the current version; retired versions are frozen into snapshot pages.

Namespace resolution via w3id.org #

TROV namespace URIs are persistent URIs managed through w3id.org. The redirect rules live in a .htaccess file submitted via pull request to the perma-id/w3id.org repository (under a trace/ directory). Once merged, the w3id.org Apache server uses these rules to redirect requests to our GitHub Pages site. The wildcard design means this is a one-time PR. For testing procedures, see Documentation Infrastructure.

RewriteEngine On

# All redirects use 303 (See Other) per linked data best practice.
# The wildcard (.+?) captures the version (e.g. 0.1, 1) so new versions
# work without new rules.

# Direct access to the JSON-LD context file for a specific version
RewriteRule ^trov/(.+?)/context\.jsonld$ https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/$1/context.jsonld [R=303,L]

# RDF tool requesting Turtle → serve the OWL ontology file
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} text/turtle
RewriteRule ^trov/(.+?)/?$ https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/$1/trov.ttl [R=303,L]

# JSON-LD processor requesting JSON-LD → serve the ontology in JSON-LD format
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} application/ld\+json
RewriteRule ^trov/(.+?)/?$ https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/$1/trov.jsonld [R=303,L]

# Browser or anything else → serve the HTML landing page for this version
RewriteRule ^trov/(.+?)/?$ https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/$1/ [R=303,L]

# Special case: serve the HTML landing page for the pre-release version
RewriteRule ^2023/05/trov/?$ https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/prerelease/ [R=303,L]

Examples of how namespace URIs resolve:

Request	Accept header	Resolves to
`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1/context.jsonld`	(any)	`https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/0.1/context.jsonld`
`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1`	`text/turtle`	`https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/0.1/trov.ttl`
`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1`	`application/ld+json`	`https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/0.1/trov.jsonld`
`https://w3id.org/trace/trov/0.1`	(any other)	`https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/0.1/` (HTML landing page)
`https://w3id.org/trace/2023/05/trov`	(any)	`https://transparency-certified.github.io/trov/prerelease/`

What gets served. All content — including the Turtle and JSON-LD ontology files — is served from GitHub Pages, not from the trov repo directly. The repo is the source; the GitHub Actions workflow deploys its contents to GitHub Pages, which serves files with correct MIME types to confirm the format that w3id.org’s content negotiation selected. See Documentation Infrastructure for details.

The deployed site layout:

transparency-certified.github.io/trov/
  0.1/
    context.jsonld          ← JSON-LD context file (for reference)
    index.html              ← HTML landing page (generated)
    tro-schema.json         ← JSON Schema for TRO declaration validation
    trov-shacl.ttl          ← SHACL validation shapes
    trov.jsonld             ← OWL ontology (JSON-LD)
    trov.ttl                ← OWL ontology (Turtle)
  prerelease/
    index.html              ← HTML landing page (generated)
    trov.ttl                ← frozen OWL ontology

Roadmap#

Phase 1: Stabilize 0.1 (Now — June 2026)#

Produce a documented, testable, internally consistent 0.1 that matches deployed reality.

Establish JSON Schema generation workflow.
Complete and publish the specification documents (vocabulary reference, declaration format, package format).
Enable w3id.org namespace resolution.
Fix known bugs and resolve vocabulary variations.
Test the JSON Schema against TRO declarations produced by pre-release implementations updated to target 0.1.
Publish the vocabulary reference at the namespace URI.

Phase 2: Evolve 0.x (July 2026 — June 2027)#

Extend the vocabulary, complete validation and reporting tooling, and resolve open design questions.

Release JSON Schema validator for basic structural validation of TRO declarations.
Complete SHACL shapes for validating TRO declarations and TRS certificates.
Develop trov-validate tool for deep compliance testing (SPARQL, SHACL).
Develop trov-report tool for human-readable HTML and PDF summaries (SPARQL).
Resolve open design questions (signing mechanisms, package formats, signing-identity representations).
Update trov.ttl to full OWL coverage.
Publish machine-readable vocabulary documents and JSON-LD context at namespace URIs.

Phase 3: Release 1.0 (June 2027)#

Release TROV 1.0 with guaranteed backwards compatibility, tooling for validation and reporting, and documentation sufficient for independent adoption.

Stable namespace URI with content negotiation.
Complete warrant chain validation implemented in tooling.
At least one standard TRO package format specified.
Full documentation set.

Phase 4: Governance and Maintenance 1.x (July 2027 — June 2029)#

Support independent adoption, establish community governance, and publish the vocabulary description.

Publish TRACE Adoption Guide for organizations building TRACE-compatible systems.
Expand capability and attribute type catalog based on adopter feedback.
Establish TROV Interest Group with charter and governance documents.
Engage with relevant standards bodies and research data communities.
Collect community feedback and incorporate into post-1.0 minor releases.
Submit description of vocabulary design and capabilities to a peer-reviewed journal.
Improve adopter documentation based on deployment experience.