1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o Rewrite the notify handling in the new Irssi SILC client.
6 o /cumode for unknown nick does not give any error message.
8 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
9 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
10 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
13 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
14 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
16 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
17 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
18 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
20 o Extend the /HELP command to support sub commands or something. So
21 that user can say /help set mutual_authentication they would get
22 help of the mutual_authentication setting.
25 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
26 ================================
28 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
29 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
30 should be added to notify application that it was received and
31 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
33 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
35 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
36 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
37 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
39 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
43 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
44 ========================
46 o Assure that server is allowed to connect only once to router. Meaning
47 if server connection is established already, same connection cannot be
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 Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
57 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
59 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
60 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
61 something that should have not been sent).
63 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
64 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
65 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
66 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
67 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
68 to everybody on the channel.
70 o Backup router related issues
72 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
73 switching to backup router on router crash.
75 o New configuration file format must be added. The following
76 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
77 when adding the new config file format:
79 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
80 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
83 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
86 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
87 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
89 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
91 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
92 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
93 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
96 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
97 ===========================
99 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
100 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
101 is not actually async currently.
103 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
104 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
106 o lib/silcsftp/sftp_fs_memory.c use directly open(), close() etc.
107 routines. Change to use silc_file_* routines.
109 o SILC RNG does not implement random seed files, and they should be
113 TODO in Toolkit Documentation
114 =============================
116 Stuff that needs to be done in order to complete the Tooolkit Reference
119 o Lots of ROBOdoc header formatting is undone in lib/silcske,
120 lib/silcutil, and lib/silccrypt.
122 o Write "Programming with Toolkit" document, describing how to build
123 Toolkit, how the build system works, where is everything, how
124 new (external) projects can be glued into Toolkit (use irssi as an
125 example), and how external projects can use Toolkit without gluing into
126 it (how to link etc).
128 o Write "Programming conventions" document to describe the coding
129 and naming conventions used in the Toolkit (should not be
130 actually the CodingStyle document, but something more general).
132 o Move the lib/silccrypt/silcrng.h's "how the RNG works" documentation
133 to its own html file and link it to the reference manual.
136 TODO in SILC Protocol
137 =====================
139 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
140 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
141 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
143 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
144 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
145 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
146 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
147 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
148 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
149 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
150 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
151 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
152 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
153 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
155 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
156 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
157 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
158 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
159 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
160 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
162 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
163 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
164 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
165 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
166 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
167 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
169 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
170 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
171 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
172 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
173 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
174 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
175 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
176 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
177 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
179 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
180 included in protocol version 1.x.
182 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
183 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
184 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
186 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
187 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
188 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
189 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
190 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
193 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
194 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
195 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
196 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
197 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
198 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
200 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
201 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
202 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
203 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
206 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
207 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
208 included in protocol version 1.1.
214 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
217 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
218 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
220 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
221 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
222 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
223 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
224 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
225 This should be looked at more closely.
227 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
228 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
229 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
230 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
231 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
232 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
235 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
236 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
238 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
241 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
244 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
245 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
248 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
249 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
250 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
251 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
252 registered protocols.
254 o Optimizations in Libraries
256 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
257 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
258 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
259 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
260 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
263 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
264 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
265 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
267 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
268 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
269 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
270 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
271 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
272 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
273 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
275 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
276 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
277 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
278 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
279 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
280 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
281 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
284 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
285 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
288 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
289 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
290 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
291 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
292 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
293 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
294 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
295 we can move the data handling in one place.
297 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
298 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
299 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
301 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
302 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
303 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
304 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
305 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
306 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
307 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
309 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
312 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
315 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
317 o Optimizations in Server
319 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
320 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
321 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
322 represents the packet type value.
324 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
325 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
328 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
329 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
330 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
331 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
332 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
333 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
334 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
336 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
337 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
338 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
339 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
340 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
341 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
343 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
344 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
348 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
350 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
351 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled