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 Configuration file additions:
40 o Add incoming connection frequency, incoming connection frequency
41 for single IP address, key exchange frequency, key exchange
42 frequency for single IP. Add also frequency base.
44 o Add hashed passwords to config file.
46 o Add rehashing support.
48 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
49 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
50 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
51 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
53 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
54 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
55 something that should have not been sent).
57 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
58 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
59 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
60 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
61 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
62 to everybody on the channel.
64 o Backup router related issues
66 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
67 switching to backup router on router crash.
69 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
71 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
72 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
73 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
76 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
77 ===========================
79 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
80 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
81 is not actually async currently.
83 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
84 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
86 o SILC RNG does not implement random seed files, and they should be
90 TODO in Toolkit Documentation
91 =============================
93 Stuff that needs to be done in order to complete the Tooolkit Reference
96 o Lots of ROBOdoc header formatting is undone in lib/silcutil, and
99 o Write "Programming with Toolkit" document, describing how to build
100 Toolkit, how the build system works, where is everything, how
101 new (external) projects can be glued into Toolkit (use irssi as an
102 example), and how external projects can use Toolkit without gluing into
103 it (how to link etc).
105 o Write "Programming conventions" document to describe the coding
106 and naming conventions used in the Toolkit (should not be
107 actually the CodingStyle document, but something more general).
109 o Write "Platform Implementations" document to describe what platforms
110 Toolkit support, what has been implemented, what has not been, what
111 wors differently etc.
114 TODO in SILC Protocol
115 =====================
117 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
118 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
119 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
121 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
122 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
123 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
124 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
125 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
126 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
127 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
128 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
129 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
130 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
131 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
133 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
134 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
135 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
136 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
137 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
138 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
140 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
141 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
142 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
143 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
144 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
145 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
147 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
148 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
149 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
150 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
151 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
152 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
153 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
154 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
155 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
157 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
158 included in protocol version 1.x.
160 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
161 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
162 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
164 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
165 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
166 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
167 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
168 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
171 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
172 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
173 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
174 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
175 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
176 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
178 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
179 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
180 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
181 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
184 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
185 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
186 included in protocol version 1.1.
192 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
195 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
196 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
198 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
199 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
200 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
201 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
202 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
203 This should be looked at more closely.
205 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
206 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
207 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
208 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
209 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
210 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
213 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
214 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
216 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
219 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
222 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
223 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
226 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
227 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
228 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
229 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
230 registered protocols.
232 o Optimizations in Libraries
234 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
235 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
236 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
237 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
238 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
241 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
242 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
243 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
245 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
246 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
247 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
248 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
249 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
250 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
251 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
253 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
254 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
255 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
256 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
257 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
258 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
259 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
262 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
263 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
266 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
267 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
268 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
269 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
270 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
271 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
272 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
273 we can move the data handling in one place.
275 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
276 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
277 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
279 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
280 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
281 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
282 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
283 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
284 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
285 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
287 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
290 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
293 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
295 o Optimizations in Server
297 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
298 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
299 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
300 represents the packet type value.
302 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
303 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
306 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
307 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
308 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
309 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
310 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
311 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
312 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
314 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
315 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
316 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
317 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
318 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
319 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
321 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
322 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
326 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
328 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
329 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled