Proposal: Daml upgrade migration planner

[pmensik]

Development Fund Proposal Submission

Proposal file: /proposals/daml-upgrade-migration-planner.md

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Summary

This proposal introduces the Daml Upgrade Migration Planner, a CLI-first common-good tool designed to automate and derisk smart contract upgrades on Canton. It connects to a live participant, evaluates existing package and vetting state against newly proposed DARs, and computes a deterministic, reviewable migration plan mapping out exact upload orders, multi-synchronizer vetting steps, and topology serials for safe rollback.

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Checklist

• Proposal file added under /proposals/
• Milestones and funding amounts defined
• Acceptance criteria included
• Alignment with Canton priorities described

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Notes for Reviewers

• Focus on tooling over APIs: The tool wraps and orchestrates existing Canton primitives (dpm upgrade-check, ValidateDarFile, and Admin API dry_run) into a single planning workflow rather than re-inventing Daml-LF validation.
• Bounded Scope: The tool strictly focuses on single-participant migration planning through JSON/Markdown output. Distributed multi-participant coordination and mutative release orchestration are explicitly framed as follow-up grant opportunities.
• Operational Realism: The design natively recognizes Canton's rollback asymmetry, planning for the fact that package uploads are irreversible, but vetting topology changes can be safely rolled back using CAS topology serials.