[WIP] Central repository for work on libp2p

This repository is the central place for rust development of the libp2p spec.

This readme along with many others will be more fleshed out the closer the project gets to completion. Right now everything including the crate organization is very much Work in Progress.

The main crate: libp2p

This repository includes a facade crate named libp2p, which reexports the rest of the repository.

General overview of the architecture

Architecture of the other crates of this repository:

• datastore: Utility library whose API provides a key-value storage with multiple possible backends. Used by peerstore.
• example: Example usages of this library.
• libp2p-identify: Protocol implementation that allows a node A to query another node B what information B knows about A. Implements the ConnectionUpgrade trait of libp2p-core.
• libp2p-peerstore: Generic storage for information about remote peers (their multiaddresses and their public key), with multiple possible backends. Each multiaddress also has a time-to-live. Used by libp2p-core.
• libp2p-ping: Implementation of the ping protocol (the exact protocol is specific to libp2p). Implements the ConnectionUpgrade trait of libp2p-core.
• libp2p-secio: Implementation of the secio protocol. Encrypts communications. Implements the ConnectionUpgrade trait of libp2p-core.
• libp2p-core: Core library that contains all the traits of libp2p and plugs things together.
• libp2p-tcp-transport: Implementation of the Transport trait of libp2p-core for TCP/IP.
• libp2p-websocket: Implementation of the Transport trait of libp2p-core for Websockets.
• multistream-select: Implementation of the multistream-select protocol, which is used to negotiate a protocol over a newly-established connection with a peer, or after a connection upgrade.
• rw-stream-sink: Utility library that makes it possible to wrap around a tokio Stream + Sink of bytes and implements AsyncRead + AsyncWrite.

About the impl Trait syntax

Right now a lot of code of this library uses Box<Future> or Box<Stream> objects, or forces 'static lifetime bounds.

This is caused by the lack of a stable impl Trait syntax in the Rust language. Once this syntax is fully implemented and stabilized, it will be possible to change this code to use plain and non-static objects instead of boxes.

Progress for the impl Trait syntax can be tracked in this issue of the Rust repository.

Once this syntax is stable in the nightly version, we will consider requiring the nightly version of the compiler and switching to this syntax.