1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o Fix the silc_channels_join to parse the command like, with fe.
5 silc_parse_command_line, because currently it ignores all options,
6 including passphrase which makes autojoin impossible to +a channels.
7 Other important options are ignored too.
9 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
10 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
11 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
14 o /cumode for unknown nick does not give any error message.
17 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
18 ================================
20 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
21 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
22 should be added to notify application that it was received and
23 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
25 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
27 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
28 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
29 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
31 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
35 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
36 ========================
38 o Remove old 0.6.x backwards support.
40 o Configuration file additions:
42 o Add incoming connection frequency, incoming connection frequency
43 for single IP address, key exchange frequency, key exchange
44 frequency for single IP. Add also frequency base.
46 o Add hashed passwords to config file.
48 o Add rehashing support.
50 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
51 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
52 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
53 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
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 Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
73 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
74 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
75 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
78 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
79 ===========================
81 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
82 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
83 is not actually async currently.
85 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
86 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
88 o SILC RNG does not implement random seed files, and they should be
91 o The SilcSocketConnection in the SFTP interface is actually redundant
92 and should perhaps be removed. The application can save it in the
93 context it provides, which is delivered by SFTP libary to all
97 TODO in Toolkit Documentation
98 =============================
100 Stuff that needs to be done in order to complete the Tooolkit Reference
103 o Lots of ROBOdoc header formatting is undone in lib/silcutil, and
106 o Write "Programming with Toolkit" document, describing how to build
107 Toolkit, how the build system works, where is everything, how
108 new (external) projects can be glued into Toolkit (use irssi as an
109 example), and how external projects can use Toolkit without gluing into
110 it (how to link etc), debugging, architecture, types, etc.
112 o Write "Platform Implementations" document to describe what platforms
113 Toolkit support, what has been implemented, what has not been, what
114 wors differently etc.
117 TODO in SILC Protocol
118 =====================
120 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
121 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
122 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
124 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
125 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
126 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
127 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
128 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
129 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
130 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
131 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
132 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
133 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
134 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
136 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
137 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
138 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
139 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
140 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
141 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
143 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
144 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
145 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
146 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
147 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
148 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
150 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
151 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
152 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
153 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
154 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
155 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
156 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
157 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
158 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
160 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
161 included in protocol version 1.x.
163 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
164 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
165 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
167 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
168 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
169 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
170 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
171 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
174 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
175 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
176 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
177 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
178 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
179 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
181 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
182 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
183 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
184 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
187 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
188 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
189 included in protocol version 1.1.
195 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
198 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
199 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
201 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
202 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
203 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
204 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
205 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
206 This should be looked at more closely.
208 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
209 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
210 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
211 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
212 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
213 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
216 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
217 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
219 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
222 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
225 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
226 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
229 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
230 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
231 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
232 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
233 registered protocols.
235 o Optimizations in Libraries
237 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
238 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
239 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
240 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
241 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
244 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
245 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
246 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
248 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
249 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
250 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
251 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
252 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
253 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
254 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
256 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
257 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
258 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
259 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
260 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
261 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
262 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
265 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
266 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
269 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
270 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
271 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
272 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
273 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
274 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
275 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
276 we can move the data handling in one place.
278 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
279 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
280 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
282 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
283 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
284 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
285 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
286 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
287 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
288 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
290 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
293 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
296 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
298 o Optimizations in Server
300 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
301 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
302 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
303 represents the packet type value.
305 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
306 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
309 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
310 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
311 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
312 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
313 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
314 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
315 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
317 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
318 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
319 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
320 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
321 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
322 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
324 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
325 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
329 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
331 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
332 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled