Architectural Best Practices
Areas where there is potential for confusion, where there are many mostly-equal alternatives, or where someone has developed a design pattern that can easily be reused benefit from what are called Best Practices. While they don't have the force of a Policy, they still are a valuable source of good architectural advice.
The following sections outline areas of architectural interest and concern. Some are in the form of questions (did you consider this set of problems?), while others are in the form of advice (if you are doing x, here is a good way for you do it). Of course, not all concerns will be relevant to (or a significant consideration for) any particular project, but these items can serve as a checklist to assure that every area that is applicable is carefully considered. It's impossible to be complete, but this section should give you ideas.
This section also presents architectural guidelines that projects are strongly advised to follow. There could always be reasons to deviate from these guidelines, but exceptions will need consideration, discussion, and ARC approval.
This part of the web site focuses on how to develop your project's architecture so that it adheres to general and OpenSolaris-specific engineering principles. Project teams that do so usually have an easy ARC review. But this FAQ is not about the ARC process or how to prepare for review orhow to present your project to the ARC. See the introduction to the ARC review process for that info. The ARC Handbook contains much more motivation about why the ARCs exist and what they're charter is, as well as more process detail.