1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o /USERS does not show the user modes on the channel correctly.
6 o Fix the silc_channels_join to parse the command like, with fe.
7 silc_parse_command_line, because currently it ignores all options,
8 including passphrase which makes autojoin impossible to +a channels.
9 Other important options are ignored too.
11 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
12 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
13 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
16 o Add the server/router operator info to the statusbar.
18 o /cumode for unknown nick does not give any error message.
21 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
22 ================================
24 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
25 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
26 should be added to notify application that it was received and
27 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
29 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
31 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
32 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
33 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
35 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
39 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
40 ========================
42 o Configuration file additions:
44 o Add version handling, to allow, disallow certain versions to
47 o Add incoming connection frequency, incoming connection frequency
48 for single IP address, key exchange frequency, key exchange
49 frequency for single IP. Add also frequency base.
51 o Add hashed passwords to config file.
53 o Add rehashing support.
55 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
56 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
57 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
58 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
60 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
61 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
62 something that should have not been sent).
64 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
65 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
66 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
67 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
68 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
69 to everybody on the channel.
71 o Backup router related issues
73 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
74 switching to backup router on router crash.
76 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
78 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
79 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
80 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
83 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
84 ===========================
86 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
87 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
88 is not actually async currently.
90 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
91 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
93 o SILC RNG does not implement random seed files, and they should be
96 o The SilcSocketConnection in the SFTP interface is actually redundant
97 and should perhaps be removed. The application can save it in the
98 context it provides, which is delivered by SFTP libary to all
102 TODO in Toolkit Documentation
103 =============================
105 Stuff that needs to be done in order to complete the Tooolkit Reference
108 o Lots of ROBOdoc header formatting is undone in lib/silcutil, and
111 o Write "Programming with Toolkit" document, describing how to build
112 Toolkit, how the build system works, where is everything, how
113 new (external) projects can be glued into Toolkit (use irssi as an
114 example), and how external projects can use Toolkit without gluing into
115 it (how to link etc), debugging, architecture, types, etc.
117 o Write "Platform Implementations" document to describe what platforms
118 Toolkit support, what has been implemented, what has not been, what
119 wors differently etc.
122 TODO in SILC Protocol
123 =====================
125 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
126 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
127 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
129 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
130 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
131 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
132 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
133 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
134 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
135 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
136 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
137 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
138 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
139 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
141 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
142 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
143 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
144 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
145 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
146 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
148 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
149 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
150 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
151 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
152 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
153 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
155 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
156 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
157 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
158 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
159 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
160 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
161 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
162 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
163 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
165 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
166 included in protocol version 1.x.
168 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
169 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
170 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
172 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
173 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
174 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
175 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
176 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
179 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
180 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
181 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
182 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
183 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
184 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
186 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
187 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
188 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
189 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
192 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
193 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
194 included in protocol version 1.1.
200 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
203 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
204 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
206 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
207 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
208 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
209 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
210 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
211 This should be looked at more closely.
213 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
214 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
215 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
216 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
217 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
218 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
221 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
222 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
224 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
227 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
230 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
231 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
234 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
235 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
236 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
237 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
238 registered protocols.
240 o Optimizations in Libraries
242 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
243 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
244 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
245 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
246 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
249 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
250 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
251 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
253 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
254 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
255 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
256 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
257 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
258 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
259 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
261 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
262 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
263 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
264 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
265 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
266 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
267 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
270 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
271 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
274 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
275 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
276 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
277 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
278 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
279 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
280 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
281 we can move the data handling in one place.
283 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
284 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
285 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
287 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
288 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
289 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
290 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
291 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
292 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
293 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
295 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
298 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
301 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
303 o Optimizations in Server
305 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
306 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
307 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
308 represents the packet type value.
310 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
311 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
314 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
315 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
316 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
317 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
318 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
319 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
320 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
322 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
323 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
324 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
325 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
326 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
327 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
329 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
330 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
334 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
336 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
337 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled