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- Filename: 102-drop-opt.txt
- Title: Dropping "opt" from the directory format
- Version: $Revision$
- Last-Modified: $Date$
- Author: Nick Mathewson
- Created: Jan 2007
- Status: Closed
- Implemented-In: 0.2.0.x
- Overview:
- This document proposes a change in the format used to transmit router and
- directory information.
- This proposal has been accepted, implemented, and merged into dir-spec.txt.
- Proposal:
- The "opt" keyword in Tor's directory formats was originally intended to
- mean, "it is okay to ignore this entry if you don't understand it"; the
- default behavior has been "discard a routerdesc if it contains entries you
- don't recognize."
- But so far, every new flag we have added has been marked 'opt'. It would
- probably make sense to change the default behavior to "ignore unrecognized
- fields", and add the statement that clients SHOULD ignore fields they don't
- recognize. As a meta-principle, we should say that clients and servers
- MUST NOT have to understand new fields in order to use directory documents
- correctly.
- Of course, this will make it impossible to say, "The format has changed a
- lot; discard this quietly if you don't understand it." We could do that by
- adding a version field.
- Status:
- * We stopped requiring it as of 0.1.2.5-alpha. We'll stop generating it
- once earlier formats are obsolete.
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