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).
110 TODO in SILC Protocol
111 =====================
113 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
114 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
115 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
117 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
118 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
119 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
120 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
121 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
122 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
123 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
124 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
125 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
126 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
127 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
129 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
130 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
131 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
132 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
133 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
134 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
136 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
137 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
138 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
139 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
140 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
141 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
143 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
144 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
145 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
146 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
147 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
148 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
149 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
150 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
151 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
153 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
154 included in protocol version 1.x.
156 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
157 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
158 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
160 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
161 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
162 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
163 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
164 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
167 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
168 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
169 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
170 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
171 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
172 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
174 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
175 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
176 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
177 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
180 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
181 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
182 included in protocol version 1.1.
188 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
191 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
192 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
194 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
195 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
196 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
197 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
198 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
199 This should be looked at more closely.
201 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
202 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
203 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
204 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
205 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
206 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
209 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
210 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
212 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
215 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
218 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
219 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
222 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
223 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
224 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
225 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
226 registered protocols.
228 o Optimizations in Libraries
230 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
231 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
232 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
233 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
234 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
237 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
238 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
239 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
241 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
242 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
243 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
244 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
245 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
246 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
247 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
249 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
250 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
251 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
252 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
253 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
254 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
255 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
258 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
259 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
262 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
263 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
264 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
265 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
266 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
267 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
268 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
269 we can move the data handling in one place.
271 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
272 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
273 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
275 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
276 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
277 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
278 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
279 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
280 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
281 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
283 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
286 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
289 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
291 o Optimizations in Server
293 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
294 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
295 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
296 represents the packet type value.
298 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
299 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
302 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
303 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
304 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
305 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
306 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
307 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
308 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
310 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
311 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
312 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
313 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
314 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
315 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
317 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
318 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
322 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
324 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
325 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled