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40 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
40 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
Filename: 102-drop-opt.txt
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Title: Dropping "opt" from the directory format
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Version: $Revision$
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Last-Modified: $Date$
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Author: Nick Mathewson
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Created:
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Status: Closed
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Overview:
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This document proposes a change in the format used to transmit router and
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directory information.
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This proposal has been accepted, implemented, and merged into dir-spec.txt.
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Proposal:
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The "opt" keyword in Tor's directory formats was originally intended to
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mean, "it is okay to ignore this entry if you don't understand it"; the
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default behavior has been "discard a routerdesc if it contains entries you
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don't recognize."
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But so far, every new flag we have added has been marked 'opt'. It would
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probably make sense to change the default behavior to "ignore unrecognized
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fields", and add the statement that clients SHOULD ignore fields they don't
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recognize. As a meta-principle, we should say that clients and servers
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MUST NOT have to understand new fields in order to use directory documents
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correctly.
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Of course, this will make it impossible to say, "The format has changed a
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lot; discard this quietly if you don't understand it." We could do that by
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adding a version field.
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Status:
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* We stopped requiring it as of 0.1.2.5-alpha. We'll stop generating it
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once earlier formats are obsolete.
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