Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: summit flag day?

[William Uther]

On 24/04/2008, at 4:02 AM, Zack Weinberg wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Koen Kooi  
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Please ensure that new mtn releases can still talk to 'old'  
> > releases over
> > netsync, otherwise you are needlessly stabbing people in the eye when
> > $distro upgrades their mtn version, but the main project server is  
> > on debian
> > (old-)stable.
>
> This is unfortunately not possible for many of the changes under
> discussion.  The magnitude of the "flag day" should not be
> underestimated - we are talking about things that require reissuing
> all certs.  Have a look at the "0.25 or earlier" section of UPGRADE
> for a description of what it was like for projects the last time we
> had to do this.
>
> We really need a scheme for versioning the algorithm used to digest
> and sign a particular object.  If we had that, then it would be
> possible to continue checking signatures on old objects in the old
> way, but use the new algorithm for all new objects.  I have been
> unable to think of any such algorithm that doesn't break the netsync
> protocol by attaching additional information to signature strings, but
> I confess to not having thought about it very hard.

Is breaking netsync an issue?  We're talking about a flag day anyway.

I'm assuming that any single cert is never upgraded - just new certs are
added using new algorithms.  As such, a simple ID on the front of the  
cert
should be enough to disambiguate all the different algorithms.

Or am I misunderstanding?

Will         :-}