4 This is more or less complete list of tasks that has to be done before
5 SILC 1.0 could ever be released. It is clear that the list does not
6 include all the bugs that exists. At the end of list are tasks that
7 needs to be done but are probably post 1.0.
9 Feel free to contribute if you have the ability and free time - all the
10 help is really appreciated - and needed.
18 o Optimization in general. I have not focused to program optimized code
19 in many circumstances. It has been more important to get this up and
20 working. A lot must be optimized especially the ID cache. Instead of
21 using lists some hash tables should be used. The searching by ID and
22 such must be made a lot faster. If someone would like dedicate their
23 efforts purely to generate optimized code I'd be appreaciated.
25 o We should replace all short, int, long, unsigned short, unsigned int,
26 unsigned long with some pre-defined datatypes that really are what
27 we want on all platforms. int16, uint16, int32, uint32 etc. are
28 what we could use or maybe SilcInt16, SilcUInt16 etc. Also, boolean
29 datatype should be defined.
31 o Add boolean (or bool), typedef of unsigned char.
33 o More platform supports should be added. The code is pretty much
34 generic but there are some parts that require porting (SIM). Also,
35 some support for different platforms is needed into configure.in.
37 o SILC requires currently GCC to work because we use GCC specific
38 compilation options. Generally any compiler that supports inline
39 functions and can build shared libraries (for SIMs) should work.
40 These cases should be included into configure.in.
42 o Extended SIM (SILC Module) support. Currently only SILC Cipher API
43 and SILC Hash API may be used as SIM's. What I have in mind is to
44 have extended support for SIM's so that basically any SILC API could
45 be used as SIM's. This would open tremendous possiblities but
46 opens also issues on security that needs to be dealt with.
48 Some sort of SIM compilation environment should be defined so that
49 the SIM's could use SILC specific symbols from the modules (which they
50 cannot do currently). In the future modules could add new features
51 to SILC easily with this support. I'm more thinking this from client's
52 perspective to add new features to client (such as IRC support as SIM)
53 but server should have the support as well. Anyhow, this is an
54 interesting feature...
56 This maybe post 1.0 task - dunno.
58 o SIM support for other platforms than just for Linux. Apache has
59 example code (code that we could use directly pretty easily) for
62 TODO In SILC Client Library
63 ===========================
65 o Non-blocking connection on the background must be stopped if some
66 other connection on same window has established. Now it is possible
67 that some non-blocking connection timeouts on the background when
68 we already have a working connection to some other place; things
71 o Input line on UI is buggy. Cursor movement etc bugs. Too lazy to
74 o Logic for handling multiple same nicknames for example in private
75 message sending. I guess the logic is done in server side but is
78 o I guess, public key authentication (when connecting to a server)
79 is not working currently. It is just matter of loading the keys
80 from file and using them (see corresponding code in server, it should
81 support public key authentication already).
83 o Connection Authentication request resolving is missing and must be
84 done. This is required by the protocol.
90 o Packet processing can be made faster. All packet function in the
91 packet_receive.c has same prototypes. Instead of calling those from
92 huge switch() make a table of callback functions that can be called
93 directly by the packet type.
95 o silc_server_send_key_agreement and silc_server_send_private_message_key
96 are one and same function (also silc_server_send_private_message is
97 almost same function). These should be unified to one generic named
98 function and use that.
100 o DNS/IP lookup blocks the server. This must be fixed. Check the
101 resolver stuff (resolver(3), resolver(5)). Either we have to do the
102 own resolver stuff (through scheduler, if possible without writing
103 too much own stuff) or use threads.
105 o Length of the packet processing timeouts needs to be checked whether
106 they are too short or too long. I haven't really tested whether they
107 are suitable. They should be tested on high load which I haven't done
110 o INVITE command must set the channel's invite list if channel is
113 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but currently
114 that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single server.
116 o Command flag usage in general is not implemented yet.
118 o Client history must be implemented. Protocol says that server must
119 keep history information about clients for some period of time.
121 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be configurable.
123 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask format
124 as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
126 o Connection classes should be actually implemented in serverconfig.c.
127 They can be defined but they are totally ignored currently.
129 o Acceptance of incoming connections (client and server connections)
130 should be checked before key exchange protocol. Currently it is
131 checked at the authentication phase after KE, that is ok, but it should
132 be checked before starting KE, as well.
135 TODO In SILC Libraries
136 ======================
138 o Rewrite the task system. I made it too complex and too "neat" and
139 it really should be rewritten. We don't need priorities really, one
140 priority is enough. This will simplify a lot the task system.
142 o Implement PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) flag in SKE (and in client and
143 server, actually). If PFS is set, re-key must cause new key exchange.
144 This is required by the SILC protocol.
146 o Re-key in general is actually missing (from everywhere) and must be done.
148 o ID Cache expiry does not work.
150 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
151 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Comp API must be
152 defined. zlib package is already included into the lib dir (in CVS,
153 not in distribution), but it is not used yet, and it requires some
154 tweaking on the Makefiles (we want static lib not shared).
156 o SIM support for SILC PKCS API needs to made so that they could be
157 used as SIM's. At the same time some work is required on prime
158 generation as the way it is done now sucks. Read from code for
161 o Random Number Generator needs some tweaking. Reading /dev/random may
162 block resulting slow initialization of RNG. Some other things in the
163 RNG may block as well. Also, I have some pending changes to the RNG
164 that needs to be commited (from Schneier's Yarrow-160 paper). They
165 should make the RNG even better.
167 o Scheduler needs to be analyzed on high load as it might be unfair
168 towards select() because it may run timeout tasks before select() and
169 after select(). If it is found to be unfair the timeout task running
170 before select() should probably be removed.
176 o Write manuals for server.
178 o Write manuals for client.
180 o Write SILC Library Reference manual. This would include all the SILC
181 API's with simple examples how the functions are to be used. This is
182 pretty easy to create by taking all the functions plus their comments
183 from source/header files. However, same sort of reference manual
184 should be written for client and server as well.
190 o Pthreads support. A lot of problems are solved with server (and with
191 client as well) if we add pthread support. We can forget things such
192 as non-blocking connecting etc, and we can do things such as DNS/IP
193 lookups async. The server itself also benefits great deal from
194 threads, especially from performance point of view.
196 But, this is not a small task and almost entire SILC Library has to
197 be made re-entrant. Own API is probably added for the threads support
198 to make changes in the future as painless as possible. So the API
199 would have things like silc_mutex_lock, silc_mutex_unlock and
202 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
203 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
204 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
205 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
206 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
207 This should be looked at more closely.
209 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
210 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
211 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
212 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
213 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
214 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
217 o SSH2 public keys support. Maybe - not really needed but could be
218 nice as SSH is widely used all over the place. SILC Protocol
219 supports SSH2 public keys.
221 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.