Current FedSocket implementation has a bunch of problems. It doesn't
have proper error handling (in case of an error the server just doesn't
respond until the connection is closed, while the client doesn't match
any error messages and just assumes there has been an error after 15s)
and the code is full of bad descisions (see: fetch registry which uses
uuids for no reason and waits for a response by recursively querying a
ets table until the value changes, or double JSON encoding).
Sometime ago I almost completed rewriting fedsockets from scrach to
adress these issues. However, while doing so, I realized that fedsockets
are just too overkill for what they were trying to accomplish, which is
reduce the overhead of federation by not signing every message.
This could be done without reimplementing failure states and endpoint
logic we already have with HTTP by, for example, using TLS cert auth,
or switching to a more performant signature algorithm. I opened
https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/issues/2262 for further
discussion on alternatives to fedsockets.
From discussions I had with other Pleroma developers it seems like they
would approve the descision to remove them as well,
therefore I am submitting this patch.
While taking a final look at instance.gen before releasing I noticed
that the release_env task outputs messages in broken english. Upon
further inspection it seems to have even more severe issues which, in
my opinion, warrant it's at least temporary removal:
- We do not explain what it actually does, anywhere. Neither the task
docs nor instance.gen, nor installation instructions.
- It does not respect FHS on OTP releases (uses /opt/pleroma/config even
though we store the config in /etc/pleroma/config.exs).
- It doesn't work on OTP releases, which is the main reason it exists.
Neither systemd nor openrc service files for OTP include it.
- It is not mentioned in install guides other than the ones for Debian
and OTP releases.
Mark Felder