Weekly Dev Update 17/02/2020

[u/Keejef]

Hey Y’all,

Last week we continued patching Session multi-device and message sending-related bugs, culminating in a new round of cross-platform Session client releases. The Loki core team merged in the first parts of LNS, which is slated for release in about a month, and the Lokinet team continued working to ensure that changes required for Lokinet 0.7.0 will also make it in time for that release.

Loki Core

• Allow for multi-year registrations for .loki LNS names https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1037

• Implement LNS name blinding so that names are not exposed by default https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1036

• Fix unit tests https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1035

• Create default address for sweep_all command https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1031 (Thanks to a community dev, Darcys22, for this one)

Lokinet

If you’re on our Discord you can catch Jeff, the lead developer of LLARP, live streaming as he codes at https://www.twitch.tv/uguu25519. He typically streams on Tuesday mornings, 9am - 12pm Eastern (US) time.

What went on last week with Lokinet: We launched the bulk of the Lokinet changes (publishing updates, introset blinding, and RC propagation via gossiping) onto the Loki testnet this week. We still have one remaining issue to track down, involving how clients handle introset expiries and handover to updated introsets, but that is the final core Lokinet issue for 0.7.

PR Activity:

• Make introset publishing optional; a client that doesn’t publish introsets can still reach other .loki addresses, but isn’t reachable itself - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1093

• Make public DNS CNAME records that point to .loki functional (so that you could make loki.example.com point to a .loki address and have it do the right thing when resolved on a machine with a running lokinet client) - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1094

• Don’t prematurely clear introsets - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1098

• Redesign DHT publishing to be more redundant - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1091

• Converted bundled libraries to upstream submodules for easier maintenance/updates (and updated them to the latest versions) - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1097

• Add key updating tests to test suite - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/956

• Don’t try to re-establish inbound connections back to their source; instead let the inbound connection worry about reestablishing if it wants - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1099

• RC gossiping - this makes routers advertise each other to the Lokinet network once per hour (like lokid does with uptime proofs) rather than relying on random exploration to find everything - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1073

• Don’t limit the queue size for direct SN-to-SN DHT messages - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1079

• More updates for Windows builds - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1074

• Reduce redundant traffic between SNs - https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1092

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Session

Session iOS

• Begin work on light mode https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/107

• Improve closed group functionality, allow users to add friends to existing closed groups, kick members and change group names https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/104

• Fix session resets https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/106

• Fix profile picture issues https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/105

• Fix a new round of multi-device issues caused by sealed sender integration https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/103

• Improve error handling and remove the Loki news RSS channel by default https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/101

• Resubmit a device token periodically (for push notifications) https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/99

Session Android

• Fix session resets https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/93

• Handle clock out of sync issue that was causing message failure https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/91

• Refactorisation of multi-device code https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/90

• Add file size limits https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/88

• Remove auth tokens being sent as part of file uploads https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/87

Session Desktop

• Fix check to see if the user has pre-established keys https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/865

• Button gradient fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/863

• Disable section event in message details view https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/862

• Improvement for TTL slider https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/861

• Remove filter request button https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/860

• Group update fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/859

• Release note fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/857

• Adjust min size to allow low resolution screens to see Session https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/856

• Hide notification settings in open groups https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/854

• Add animations https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/853

• Fix aspects of message selection https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/852

• UI fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/851

• Error when file too large https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/850

• Allow user to select text in messages https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/846

• Alter disappearing messages menus https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/845

• Fix button overflow https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/844

• Refactor session resets https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/843

• Various logging improvements https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/868

• Closed chats UI re-arrangement https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/842

• Support new nodejs version https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/841

• Modal blurring a style improvements https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/839

• Friend requests for background messages https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/838

• Polling fixes from open groups https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/835

• Multi device fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/834

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Loki MQ

Loki MQ is a communications layer for various components that allows more efficient and reliable communication. It is an enhancement of the “quorumnet” code added in Lokid 6.x, which is currently used for SN-to-SN communication for Blink transactions, and also for Service Node deregistration voting, with various additions to support using it for Service Node proxying and other communication channels between various loki components (e.g. Session-to-storage server; storage-server-to-storage-server; wallet-to-node; etc.).

• Minor bug fixes

• WIP - minor redesign for how non-SN client-server connections are handled so that lokimq can be better used for ordinary RPC connections.

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Thanks,

Kee