Pigeon-Ruby/README.md

Pigeon Ruby

A WIP pigeon protocol client.

How to Use

This is a pre-release skeleton project. There is no gem yet. The gem will be released after we are fully compliant with the spec and have high test coverage stats.

To get started, clone this repo and run ./pigeon-cli in place of pigeon.

Eg: pigeon identity show becomes ./pigeon-cli show.

Current Status

• pigeon identity new
• pigeon identity show
• pigeon status
• pigeon blob set
• pigeon blob get
• pigeon peer add
• pigeon peer remove
• pigeon peer block
• pigeon peer all
• 100% coverage
• Convert ".sig.ed25519" literals to constants
• Rename numerous "pigeon message ..." commands to "pigeon draft ..."
• pigeon draft create
• pigeon draft append
• pigeon draft current
• pigeon draft save
• pigeon bundle create
• Use JSON.stringify() for string keys (instead of inspect)
• Move literals into Pigeon module as constants, again.
• pigeon message find
• pigeon message find-all for local feed.
• pigeon bundle consume (We are minimally feature complete at this point)
• Fix the diagram in the spec document
• Validate inputs for Draft#[]=.
• Put all the [HEADER, string, FOOTER].join("") nonsense into Pigeon::Helpers
• Use raw SHA256 hashes for blob multihashes, not hex.
• Change all the {40,90} values in ::Lexer to real length values
• Don't double-ingest messages. It will screw up indexes.
• 100% test coverage
• Implement pigeon message find-all for peer feed. I will need to add index for author => message_count
• Switch to Crockford base32- Simplifies support for legacy systems. Easy to implement.
• Need a way of importing / exporting a feeds blobs. (see "Bundle Brainstorming" below)
• Need a way of adding a peers messages / blobs to bundles. (see "Bundle Brainstorming" below)
• refactor Bundle.create to use message find-all.
• Add mandatory --from= arg to bundle create
• Make the switch to LevelDB, RocksDB or similar (currently using Ruby PStore).
• Change all multihashes to Base32 to support case-insensitive file systems?
• Rename (RemoteIdentity|LocalIdentity)#public_key to #multihash for consistency with other types.
• Rename message find to message read, since other finders return a multihash.
• Don't allow any type of whitespace in kind or string keys. Write a test for this.
• Check block list before ingesting bundles.
• Create regexes in ::Lexer using strings and Regexp.new() for cleaner regexes.
• Handle the three outcomes of bundle ingestion: ok, blocked, already_saved.
• add parsers and validators for all CLI inputs
• Remove all .current "singletons" / hacks
• Reduce whole darn repo into single module to aide portability. Maybe a second ::Support module is OK.
• Update the bundles.md document once bundle consume works.
• Use URNs instead of multihash?
• Add .pigeon file extensions
• Add Lipmaa links like the Bamboo folks do.
• Ensure all disks writes perform verification!
• Publish a RubyGem
• 100% documentation
• Update spec document CLI usage examples to reflect API changes in 2020.
• Performance benchmarks (Do this second to last!)
• Performance tuning (Do this last!)

Idea Bin

• Map/reduce plugin support for custom indices?
• Ability to add a blob in one swoop using File objects and Message#[]=, maybe?

New Bundle Format

We have a bundle format that works, but it only exports messages.

We need a bundle format that may optionally include blobs as well.

Here's how we will support that:

1. Create a bundle_X/ directory. The name is arbitrary and can be defined by the user.
2. In the root directory of bundle_x/, a single messages.pgn file contains all messages.

• All messages are expected to be sorted by depth
• Messages from multiple authors may be included in a single bundle, but the messages must appear in the correct order with regards to the depth field.

3. Blobs are stored in a very specific hierarchy to maintain FAT compatibility:
   • blobs/sha256/AAAAAAAA/BBBBBBBB/CCCCCCCC/DDDDDDDD/EEEEEEEE/FFFFFFFF/G.HHH

Additional notes:

• It is recommended to compress bundles (ex: *.zip files) but these concerns are not handled by the protocol currently.