feat: initial project charter

Author: claymcleod

.gitignore

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+book

book.toml

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+[book]
+authors = ["The Rust-Seq Developers"]
+language = "en"
+multilingual = false
+src = "src"
+title = "Rust-Seq Charter"

src/SUMMARY.md

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+# Summary
+
+- [Overview](./overview.md)
+- [Stack](stack.md)
+  - [Values](stack/values.md)

src/overview.md

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+# Overview
+
+`rust-seq` is a distributed project that aims to organize and align the broader
+community towards building a _better_ foundation upon which the next-generation
+of omics tooling can be developed. This is accomplished by a few distinct but
+related initiatives:
+
+- Creating the `rust-seq` stack: a collection of community-developed libraries
+  and tooling (written in Rust) that are collaboratively developed to provide a
+  high-quality, symbiotic foundation for omics-based analysis tools.
+- Developing asyncronous mechanisms for identifying gaps in the ecosystem and
+  facilitating community discussion around those gaps (e.g., "what crates _need_
+  to exist but don't yet?").
+- Providing infrastructure for the development of this high-quality foundation
+  (e.g., common continuous integration/continuous delivery pipelines that can be
+  leveraged by tool authors).
+- Improving awareness of ongoing efforts generally within the community via
+  common discussion channels (i.e., the [`rust-seq` Zulip chat] and the
+  [`rust-seq` GitHub discussions]).
+
+[`rust-seq` Zulip chat]: https://rustseq.zulipchat.com/join/e23ago52gswtbnp3azlidfem/
+[`rust-seq` GitHub discussions]: https://github.com/orgs/rust-seq/discussions

src/stack.md

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+# The `rust-seq` Stack
+
+The `rust-seq` stack is developed in a distributed manner. This means that
+some crates will be available on the [`rust-seq` GitHub], while others will be
+available under different organizations.
+
+[`rust-seq` GitHub]: https://github.com/rust-seq

src/stack/values.md

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+# Values
+
+The following are values for any crates adopted in the `rust-seq` stack.
+
+## Correctness
+
+Most fundamentally, software in the `rust-seq` stack is designed to produce
+correct results or error with reasonable error messages when producing correct
+results is not possible. We collectively believe that bioinformatics tools today
+are fragile and all too often either (a) silently fail or (b) return unhelpful
+information when failures occur. Eliminating these modes of failure in omics
+development and analyses is one of the primary reasons the project was created.
+
+To that end, correctness should be considered the highest priority of crates in
+the `rust-seq` stack—**even at the cost of performance**.
+
+## Performance
+
+Beyond correctness, performance is the next most fundamental goal of crates
+within the `rust-seq` stack. Simply put, if software is not performant, it's
+unlikely to be widely adopted and used. As such, there is a high emphasis on
+optimization and benchmarking for crates in the `rust-seq` stack. Changes that
+introduce regressions in performance are unlikely to be accepted (unless the
+case is sufficiently demonstrated that a new feature is worth the cost of a
+performance hit).
+
+# Contributable
+
+Crates in the `rust-seq` stack are designed to be contributed to be the
+community. Though one individual may carry the vision for a particular crate in
+the beginning, it should be possible for anyone to take a few hours to
+grok a crate's design, develop a set of improvements, and then submit those
+improvements to be considered. Achieving this uniformly across an ecosystem of
+crates necessitates many common practices, including:
+
+- All crates are **comprehensively tested** to ensure that code can be modified
+  and refactored by non-experts with confidence.
+- All crates are **comprehensively linted** to ensure that code is of the
+  highest quality possible.
+- All crates are **comprehensively documented** to ensure that using the code is
+  clear and straightforward. This means (a) ensuring documentation for all
+  public-facing code, (b) ensuring documentation for all private code [to ease
+  development in those areas], and (c) including examples for any user-facing
+  code to make sure usage is straightforward. Note that this can be accomplished
+  largely by enabling the [`missing_docs`],
+  [`clippy::missing_docs_in_private_items`], and
+  [`rustdoc::missing_doc_code_examples`] lints.
+
+All of the above should be independently verified and readily reported by
+continuous integration processes on PRs to ensure that contributors can iterate
+asyncronously towards a common goal-post for contributions. Note that this also
+builds confidence in hesistant contributors that they can work without the
+perception of bothering maintainers, which is a common discourager of
+open-source contributions.
+
+## Maintained
+
+Crates in the `rust-seq` stack are _permanent_ commitments to addressing a
+particular need in the ecosystem. In particular, they are not "published and
+forgotten". To that end, the expectation is that crates will continue to evolve
+as technology evolves, providing a first-class experience that's always up to date.
+
+## Stable
+
+Crates in the `rust-seq` stack follow [semantic versioning]. In brief, this
+means that you can immediately look at the version and know the stage of the
+project (`v0.y.z` means the crate is still in development and the API is not yet
+stable), `v1.y.z` is the first stable release that will always remain backwards
+compatible for version starting with `v1`, etc). It also means that software
+will not unexpectedly break once you've built on top of a particular dependency
+(not considering, of course, when software is in the `v0.y.z` stage).
+
+[`missing_docs`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/nightly-rustc/rustc_lint/builtin/static.MISSING_DOCS.html
+[`clippy::missing_docs_in_private_items`]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/master/index.html#/missing_docs_in_private_items
+[`rustdoc::missing_doc_code_examples`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/nightly-rustc/rustdoc/lint/static.MISSING_DOC_CODE_EXAMPLES.html
+[semantic versioning]: https://semver.org/