Filename: 102-drop-opt.txt Title: Dropping "opt" from the directory format 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.