1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o Rewrite the notify handling in the new Irssi SILC client.
6 o /cumode for unknown nick does not give any error message.
8 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
9 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
10 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
13 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
14 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
16 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
17 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
18 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
21 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
22 ================================
24 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
25 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
26 should be added to notify application that it was received and
27 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
29 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
31 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
32 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
33 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
35 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
39 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
40 ========================
42 o Assure that server is allowed to connect only once to router. Meaning
43 if server connection is established already, same connection cannot be
46 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
47 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
48 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
49 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
51 o Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
53 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
55 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
56 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
57 something that should have not been sent).
59 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
60 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
61 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
62 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
63 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
64 to everybody on the channel.
66 o Backup router related issues
68 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
69 switching to backup router on router crash.
71 o New configuration file format must be added. The following
72 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
73 when adding the new config file format:
75 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
76 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
79 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
82 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
83 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
85 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
87 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
88 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
89 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
92 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
93 ===========================
95 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
96 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
97 is not actually async currently.
99 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
100 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
102 o lib/silcsftp/sftp_fs_memory.c use directly open(), close() etc.
103 routines. Change to use silc_file_* routines.
105 o SILC RNG does not implement random seed files, and they should be
109 TODO in Toolkit Documentation
110 =============================
112 Stuff that needs to be done in order to complete the Tooolkit Reference
115 o Lots of ROBOdoc header formatting is undone in lib/silcske,
116 lib/silcutil, and lib/silccrypt.
118 o Write "Programming with Toolkit" document, describing how to build
119 Toolkit, how the build system works, where is everything, how
120 new (external) projects can be glued into Toolkit (use irssi as an
121 example), and how external projects can use Toolkit without gluing into
122 it (how to link etc).
124 o Write "Programming conventions" document to describe the coding
125 and naming conventions used in the Toolkit (should not be
126 actually the CodingStyle document, but something more general).
128 o Move the lib/silccrypt/silcrng.h's "how the RNG works" documentation
129 to its own html file and link it to the reference manual.
132 TODO in SILC Protocol
133 =====================
135 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
136 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
137 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
139 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
140 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
141 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
142 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
143 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
144 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
145 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
146 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
147 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
148 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
149 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
151 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
152 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
153 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
154 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
155 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
156 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
158 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
159 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
160 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
161 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
162 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
163 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
165 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
166 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
167 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
168 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
169 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
170 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
171 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
172 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
173 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
175 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
176 included in protocol version 1.x.
178 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
179 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
180 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
182 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
183 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
184 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
185 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
186 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
189 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
190 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
191 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
192 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
193 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
194 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
196 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
197 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
198 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
199 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
202 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
203 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
204 included in protocol version 1.1.
210 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
213 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
214 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
216 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
217 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
218 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
219 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
220 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
221 This should be looked at more closely.
223 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
224 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
225 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
226 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
227 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
228 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
231 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
232 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
234 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
237 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
240 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
241 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
244 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
245 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
246 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
247 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
248 registered protocols.
250 o Optimizations in Libraries
252 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
253 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
254 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
255 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
256 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
259 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
260 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
261 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
263 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
264 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
265 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
266 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
267 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
268 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
269 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
271 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
272 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
273 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
274 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
275 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
276 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
277 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
280 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
281 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
284 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
285 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
286 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
287 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
288 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
289 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
290 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
291 we can move the data handling in one place.
293 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
294 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
295 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
297 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
298 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
299 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
300 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
301 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
302 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
303 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
305 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
308 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
311 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
313 o Optimizations in Server
315 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
316 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
317 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
318 represents the packet type value.
320 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
321 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
324 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
325 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
326 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
327 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
328 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
329 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
330 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
332 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
333 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
334 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
335 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
336 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
337 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
339 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
340 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
344 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
346 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
347 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled