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