Hi girls and guys!
Rust-5! By now we’re getting into the rhythm of the Rust sprints. As we all know we seriously took the time to plan in much more detail through the RFC process the current sprint. This has resulted in the first week of Rust-5 progressing well and we’re nicely on track! That does not mean that we are getting complacent though, we need to maintain our velocity and make sure that we reserve enough time to properly test all the components prior to the end of the sprint.
So what are the objectives and how far have we gotten after the first week? There are three RFC’s currently being worked on:
- uTP hole punching (Crust)
- connection management (Routing)
- SAFE Launcher (Client)
Several issues are being addressed in Vaults and the QA team is also busy improving the installers. The overarching objective is to enable the community to join in testing the network at a larger scale.
From Crust’s side most of the work in UDP hole punching is finished, several issues remain and Vinicius had to extend to the uTP protocol to make it possible. Working higher up the library stack, Routing has been preparing the ground for UDP-hole punching / uTP connections. To achieve this the existing TCP connection management had to be improved and such that the connection management can both work with normal TCP connections, but can also fall back to uTP connections with hole punching and rendez-vous connections. In English this means that for all of us to be able to join the network, we need to do extra work. Unfortunately, most of our computers are behind routers that do ‘Network Address Translation.’ When that’s the case, they are not directly reachable and both computers need to reach out to each other at the same time to build a connection. That way we can really build a network supported by all its users!
The second leg of the sprint deliverable is the SAFE Launcher. @ustulation and @Krishna_Kumar have been scoring points (JIRA points) like crazy and they have been progressing well although there is a lot more to be done - it’s a big task. It is anticipated that Launcher will be available as a command line app at the end of this sprint, with @Scott and others working on integrating a UI soon after. Krishna is also updating the DNS example you all know to be compatible with the new Launcher at the beginning of last week.
While Vaults has no new features listed for the current sprint, @qi_ma and @anon86652309 have been working hard to further debug and address issues in the Vault layer. As the sprint progresses, more resources from Crust and Routing will hopefully join them there.
As with Rust 4, the community have been able to get involved in the sprint using the bounty program and we have received 3 pull requests for a total of 14 points. The team worked very hard during the planning phase to improve the detail within each task and it looks like these improvements are enabling the community to bite off bigger tasks. This is really encouraging to see and is something we will continue to focus on moving forward.
Finally, Fraser deserves a big congrats on knocking down many of the installer tasks last week. This might not sound as exciting, but it is crucially important to make sure it is increasingly easier for all of you to set up your vault and contribute to testing the network! @Ross will be continuing that work this week.
Overall, we’re off to a really good start, but there is no room for resting on our laurels. We will need to keep working flat out to achieve some really exciting deliverables!
As an aside, but no less important, @justine_mclevy, Scott and Linda have also been working hard to get another FabLab workshop organised for kids in Troon as part of the MaidSafe Foundation
Wishing you all an amazing week!
Ben
but thats how it is in life 
gambling is evil
so I don’t worry at all … 
